a6 murder

[Victor]

Validity of LCN

From the Ruling of Reed & Reed and Garmson:-

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2009/2698.html

74. On the evidence before us, we consider we can express our opinion that it is clear that, on the present state of scientific development:

i) Low Template DNA can be used to obtain profiles capable of reliable interpretation if the quantity of DNA that can be analysed is above the stochastic threshold – that is to say where the profile is unlikely to suffer from stochastic effects (such as allelic drop out mentioned at paragraph 48) which prevent proper interpretation of the alleles.

ii) There is no agreement among scientists as to the precise line where the stochastic threshold should be drawn, but it is between 100 and 200 picograms.

iii) Above that range, the LCN process used by the FSS can produce electrophoretograms which are capable of reliable interpretation. There may, of course, be differences between the experts on the interpretation, for example as to whether the greater number of amplifications used in this process has in the particular circumstances produced artefacts and the effect of such artefacts on the interpretation. Care may also be needed in interpretation where the LCN process is used on larger quantities than that for which it is normally used. However a challenge to the validity of the method of analysing Low Template DNA by the LCN process should no longer be permitted at trials where the quantity of DNA analysed is above the stochastic threshold of 100-200 picograms in the absence of new scientific evidence. A challenge should only be permitted where new scientific evidence is properly put before the trial court at a Plea and Case Management Hearing (PCMH) or other pre-trial hearing for detailed consideration by the judge in the way described at paragraphs 129 and following below.

iv) As we have mentioned, it is now the practice of the FSS to quantify the amount of DNA before testing. There should be no difficulty therefore in ascertaining the quantity and thus whether it is above the range where it is accepted that stochastic effects should not prevent proper interpretation of a profile.

v) There may be cases where reliance is placed on a profile obtained where the quantity of DNA analysed is within the range of 100-200 picograms where there is disagreement on the stochastic threshold on the present state of the science. We would anticipate that such cases would be rare and that, in any event, the scientific disagreement will be resolved as the science of DNA profiling develops. If such a case arises, expert evidence must be given as to whether in the particular case, a reliable interpretation can be made. We would anticipate that such evidence would be given by persons who are expert in the science of DNA and supported by the latest research on the subject. We would not anticipate there being any attack on the good faith of those who sought to adduce such evidence.

75. In reaching this view we have taken account of the evidence of Dr Budowle. In his report, he set out his view that LCN was not a robust technology; for example samples not susceptible to SGM+ analysis contain too little DNA and yield inherently non-reproducible results. At one stage of his evidence he appeared to accept the conclusions we have set out; he then appeared to go back on this. It might therefore have appeared that he had contradicted himself. If that had been the case, it would have cast grave doubts about the value of his evidence. We think, however, from a detailed consideration of the transcript that he did not, in the result, resile from his acceptance of the conclusions we have set out, but was rightly seeking to draw attention to the need for careful interpretation and to the need for an expert to take considerable care in the conclusions expressed. We have also considered his comments about the protocols and guidelines for the interpretation of LCN DNA with which he had been provided, but the materials before us did not support the observations he made.

KR,
Vic.

[caz]

Hi Caz,
While currently engaged in trying to look up the backgrounds of various witnesses in this case ---I will try to summarise a judge"s caution to the jury in his summing up with reference to the reliability of the process of identification where a victim has been severely traumatised in a sexual attack.In the case of a Scottish man, John McGranaghan,the judge reminded the jury of the Turnbull guidelines,introduced in 1977 after the Devlin report.This particular judge drew attention to the effect which terror might have on the three women"s reliability as witnesses of identification....
In each case three victims of these sexual assaults were with their assailant "for a considerable period in conditions of prevailing but not unbroken darkness".Of the three women concerned two believed they had correctly identified the man by his voice and accent.But they had not---none of them had identified the correct assailant and in this case the analysis of semen stains showed their identification in each case was totally unsafe. But McGranaghan had been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment even though the routine scientific analysis of the semen stains on each of their beds had proved that he could not posibly have committed those offences.Moreover the first victim even referred,as Valerie Storie had done,to the indelible impression that the assailants eyes had left on her.But in all three cases they were completely mistaken.McGranaghan had served ten yearsfor a crime he had had nothing to do with ---on appeal all counts were quashed.Case of John McGranaghan,30 October 1991,Lord Justice Glidewell,Mr Justice Hodgson and Mr Justice Buckley.
Best
Norma

Many congrats, Nats, you’ve made the case against Hanratty even more likely to be a sound one.

If you had found that 90% of rape victims manage to misidentify their attacker, you might have had a point. If the reality is 50% or less, you don’t. Seeking to undermine the ability of a particular woman to correctly identify the man who raped her, shot her and left her for dead demands specific evidence in her case, or an awful lot more evidence about rape victims generally. Otherwise it does you and your overall argument no favours at all.

If the forensic evidence, which fully supports Valerie Storie’s identification, had been shown to be ‘totally unsafe’, as in the case you describe above, you’d have had a point. In reality, even Hanratty’s defence had to concede there was no plausible innocent explanation for the DNA findings.

If the semen stains had been incompetently or dishonestly attributed to the wrong man in the case you describe, you might have had a point. In reality the truth came out that the convicted man could not have left them.

If on appeal all counts had not been quashed, because the authorities could not admit to sending an innocent man to prison for ten years, you might have had a point. But your example only demonstrates how the powers that be performed when a genuine miscarriage of justice had taken place.

None of this supports the case for Valerie misidentifying Hanratty as the man who raped her and the authorities somehow finding it necessary, desirable or feasible to conspire together and make sure that his DNA, and only his DNA, would be “found” 40 years later on her underwear and the hanky, just so nobody previously involved would end up with egg on their face.

The whole thing looks more preposterous, as more arguments are put forward for establishment-based wickedness in this case.

Love,

Caz
X

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Nats,

Are you not trying to have it both ways? You began by saying that the DNA evidence is inherently unreliable and therefore can't be used to identify Hanratty's profile on the hanky and knickers. But now you are arguing that they correctly identified Hanratty's profile on both, but it got there innocently via contamination events and not because he was the rapist and gunman.

The question remains: where did the rapist's DNA profile - and his alone - disappear to if Hanratty was not the rapist, given that there were four significant stains left at the time of the crime: two semen and one vaginal fluid on the knickers; mucous on the hanky, and four corresponding DNA profiles found 40 years on: Hanratty, Gregsten, Storie on the knickers and Hanratty again on the hanky?

Not every case that looks "iffy" on the surface is automatically going to be rotten to its core on closer inspection.

Love,

Caz
X

But Caz,
When so many extra-extraordinary "coincidences" form the backdrop to the case for the prosecution here, it tests the boundaries of reason and credibility.What we have here can hardly be described as iffy--a series of unbelievable coincidences together with a series of statements , several contradictory, coming from a bunch of ex cons and their molls, coallescing to form the main "evidence" in the case for the prosecution !The word "iffy" seems a bit of an understatement in my opinion!
Regarding the DNA.
In 1999 a fresh form of DNA testing was developed in Britain -as you no doubt are aware, termed LCN-low copy number- allowing profiles to be taken from such exhibits of cloth that are under discussion.It was on the basis on those LCN test results,the reliability of which is now very much in question, that Judges rejected the appeal in 2002 .Since 2002, LCN has proved to be a very contraversial technique.Its worthiness discussed only recently by Dr Budowle, the former chief laboratory scientist with the FBI Washington .Dr Budowle testified at a court of appeal that LCN gave so many totally unreliable results that the FBI would not consider it safe to rely on such results .In fact it has never been used either in the US or the majority of jurisdictions in continental Europe as it has not been proven to be reliable.

My posts do not contradict one another over this matter Caz .You may term it trying to have it both ways ,but what I am actually suggesting is that even accepting the profile that emerged on these "iffy" 2002 Low copy number [LCN]tests ,such a profile could clearly have arisen because the cloth exhibits may well have been contaminated ,if they were stored over the years in a locker containing Hanratty"s semen stained trousers, or from the broken vial ,containing water from the washing of those items.
Best
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks very much for the above, very helpful Vic.
However the outcome of the above discourse was that the appeal court ruled that for future cases involving LCN,the amount of material must first be quantified [something that was not done in the A6 case]; also that juries should be warned that this form of DNA evidence must be considered not in isolation,but only in the context of all the evidence in the case.
Best
Norma

[Natalie Severn]

Caz,

I have not used the idea of "estabishment based wickedness" to look at whether or not Hanratty was guilty or innocent and while I think Acott and Oxford were clearly after a conviction that does not mean that I personally believe they were in any way wicked or concocting evidence.I do not, I am sure they did what they could to the best of their ability.However I certainly believe that in the massive amount of material they had collected, that they would have "selected" the material they believed important and discarded or omitted other material that they considered less important-material evidence which may have made a difference to the outcome.
The statement of Margaret Walker, given to Rhyl police while the trial was in progress was of crucial importance but no jury ever heard it .Her original statement has never been released ---WHY?.She was certain by way of a family event which occurred that week of the precise date she believed she saw Hanratty in Rhyl Tuesday 22 August [ the murder happening 240 miles away that night 22/23] Margaret Walker was living in the street just behind Kinmel Street in Rhyl.This would have provided vitally important corroboration to Hanratty"s claim that he was in Rhyl when the murder took place! Margaret Walker claimed she sent him over to Mrs Vincent who had no room either.No jury sadly never heard her statement---which ofcourse would have corroborated that of Mrs Jones , the landlady from Kinmel Street -the next road in Rhyl where Hanratty said had stayed and whose evidence wasnt accepted by the court because Mrs Jones made the mistake of speaking to another witness over lunch about the case and then denying it!
So lets not talk of any wicked establishment.
I dont need to be lectured about how I should feel about Valerie Storie,Caz.What happened to her was horrendous but I also happen to feel sorry for Janet Gregston , the wife of Valerie"s murdered lover!

[Natalie Severn]

Hi Peter,

From all that I've read and learned on the subject I somehow get the impression that Mike Gregsten was half expecting something like this to befall him.

Your statement here is very significant.What pressure to this effect was coming at him and from whom? From all that I have read too, Mike Gregsten expected to die.But why? Was somebody threatening him?

[Limehouse]

Wasn't Gregten about to leave the family home again?

I will never understand why the gunman decided to hold up a couple in a modest Moggie, when he could have tried his luck at the local petrol station and got a least a bit of cash. It has been suggested that he was practising for as bigger job, but it seems very unlikely to me. That the supposed gunman was distantly aquainted, via a friend, with one of the victim's family is even more suspect. If thios was a random attack, it makes you wonder what would have happened if MG and VS had not been in that car, in that location, that evening.

[Natalie Severn]

Caz,
I have thought quite a bit about the point you [and others make ] regarding the original "blood O " group semen. Not forgetting that both Alphon and Hanratty were blood "O" group -as well as 40% of the population ofcourse- if that blood "O" group semen was there in 1961, why was it not there in 1999 /2000 when the last LCN tests took place?
You make a strong point and I agree that it certainly cannot be dismissed in my view.
However,allow me to suggest one possibilty: since LCN testing has proved to be a controversial technique recently,and I can see how Hanratty"s DNA could have contaminated the fragments on cloth tested [by being stored originally with other items from the trial exhibits such as Hanratty"s trousers and the broken vial - in the same locker ],I do not see how anyone else"s DNA-such as Alphon"s for example-could have contaminated the cloth sample in a similar way, since nothing of his -or anyone else"s, is known to have been stored for all those years. Therefore given that the "small fragment of stained underwear" may have had insufficient DNA from the original Blood group "O" semen for the 1999 LCN tests to pick up then this may be the reason it has,as you put it "disappeared"!
At present all we really know about those LCN DNA tests is that their reliability is under question and that for such tests to have any real validity the amount of material must first be quantified and both known and unknown aspects of its history weighed in the balance against the findings . Only then, when we know its storage history in particular ,can its evidential integrity be scientifically evaluated regarding non-contamination ,at the present time.
best
Norma


Limehouse,
It seems Gregsten had suffered from depression for several years and when he was murdered he was on the point of ending his marriage.The new point you raise about this distant relationship could indeed have a bearing on the case!

[Victor]

However the outcome of the above discourse was that the appeal court ruled that for future cases involving LCN,the amount of material must first be quantified [something that was not done in the A6 case]; also that juries should be warned that this form of DNA evidence must be considered not in isolation,but only in the context of all the evidence in the case.

Hi Norma,

I appreciate that the DNA in the 1999 LCN Tests wasn't quantified, but the sample was tested by standard tests a couple of years beforehand where it would have been quantified. As the quantification is solely to determine whether the amount of DNA is greater than the 100-200pg stochastic limit where LCN produces reliable profiles, then the earlier quantification should be sufficient or at the least indicative.

Of course the jury in the A6 case did not have to be warned about the DNA because they didn't see it. The LCN results confirmed the earlier verdict of the jury who only evaluated the other evidence.

KR,
Vic.

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks Vic,
I have to leave this for awhile now,
Cheers
Norma


Caz,
I noticed I hadnt responded to your point about the reliability of memory,especially with regards to identification by a victim of violent assault or rape.
"Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome" is, as you probably are aware, an established medical condition . Victims of trauma ,particularly survivors of vicious assault, frequently-in fact far more often than not, " block out " their conscious memory of aspects of the assault. It seems to be natures way of protecting them from mental breakdown etc. and it forms part of what is now an accepted medical condition.In fact it is more common than not ,in an experience of extended trauma and rape such as that which Valerie Storie was subjected to.
If you recall Valerie changed her description in the early stages,identifying a completely innocent man of a quite different build and hair colour to Hanratty.She also spent a long time at the identification parade in deciding it was Hanratty---it took her a total of twenty minutes and appeared to have depended on hearing him say,"Be quiet ,I am thinking"-or similar words.It has since been discovered that Hanratty was the only "cockney" amongst the other regional and received dialects Valerie heard at the identification, and in here testimony she recalled the man spoke with a cockney accent.
Best

[Victor]

If you recall Valerie changed her description in the early stages,identifying a completely innocent man of a quite different build and hair colour to Hanratty.

Hi Norma,

Valerie did not change her description, but it is true that the police revised the description they had issued.

She did identify an innocent man on the first ID parade, but there are no pictures of him available so it is impossible to conclude that he was a different build or hair colour.

She also spent a long time at the identification parade in deciding it was Hanratty---it took her a total of twenty minutes and appeared to have depended on hearing him say,"Be quiet ,I am thinking"-or similar words.

In light of her previous mistake, it is completely understandable that she took longer in deciding in the Hanratty parade.

It has since been discovered that Hanratty was the only "cockney" amongst the other regional and received dialects Valerie heard at the identification, and in here testimony she recalled the man spoke with a cockney accent.

Woffinden did not trace all of the members of the parade, 3 are still unnaccounted for, the one's he did trace are not Cockneys but had a variety of dialects, therefore it's entirely possible that one or more of these 3 men were also Cockneys.

KR,
Vic.

[caz]

It was on the basis on those LCN test results,the reliability of which is now very much in question, that Judges rejected the appeal in 2002

No it wasn't, Nats. So there's definitely no cause for you to shout at me.

Have you read the whole appeal judgement, by the way?

The DNA results only made what was considered to be a strong case even stronger.

But if you know better than all those involved with the appeal, including Hanratty's defenders, who had nothing up their sleeves to counter the judgement...

...I'll look forward to you coming up with the necessary.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

The statement of Margaret Walker, given to Rhyl police while the trial was in progress was of crucial importance but no jury ever heard it .Her original statement has never been released ---

How are you judging it to be of 'crucial importance' then, Nats?

For all you know this statement could contain some detail that undermines her claim that it was in fact Hanratty she saw.

For starters, how could she have been sure it was him? Was this Mrs Vincent sure too? What did any of the Rhyl witnessess have for comparison purposes apart from a photo of the man on trial for his life? And how long after Margaret Walker's presumably unremarkable encounter, in August 1961, did she see a picture of Hanratty and remember having seen this man on the one day he needed to be seen in Rhyl?

It might have made a difference if all the Rhyl witnesses had come forward before Hanratty suddenly remembered he had been there. But I don't think any did, did they?

Love,

Caz
X

[Victor]

Hi Norma,

The statement of Margaret Walker, given to Rhyl police while the trial was in progress was of crucial importance but no jury ever heard it .Her original statement has never been released ---WHY?.

Why? Because Sherrard chose not to use any of the Rhyl witness statements when the case went to appeal. He had the opportunity, but opted not to.

No jury sadly never heard her statement---which ofcourse would have corroborated that of Mrs Jones , the landlady from Kinmel Street -the next road in Rhyl where Hanratty said had stayed and whose evidence wasnt accepted by the court because Mrs Jones made the mistake of speaking to another witness over lunch about the case and then denying it!

That's one possibility, another is that the jury accepted that there was no space in Ingledene on the Monday night unless you accept Foot's assumptions about the Jones family swapping rooms and sharing beds, and Hanratty staying in the attic bathroom but not mentioning it.

KR,
Vic.

[caz]

Caz,
I have thought quite a bit about the point you [and others make ] regarding the original "blood O " group semen. Not forgetting that both Alphon and Hanratty were blood "O" group -as well as 40% of the population ofcourse- if that blood "O" group semen was there in 1961, why was it not there in 1999 /2000 when the last LCN tests took place?
You make a strong point and I agree that it certainly cannot be dismissed in my view.

Thanks for that. I think you started with 50% and now it's 40%, but it was probably more like 35%, which left a majority who were not group O, and left anyone framing Hanratty with their fingers crossed.

You seem to be assuming that nobody bothered to explore the opportunities in this case for contamination of the hanky and knicker fragment during storage, or to assess the chances before arriving at the appeal judgement. So I hope you have not rushed to your own judgement before reading all about it.

Love,

Caz
X