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.Alice In Blunderland wrote:

> Not really, the only way to do it is if the person confesses or
> implicates himself during an interview, if he keeps his mouth
> shut or takes his solicitiors advice on what to answer then he
> cannot.

I have seen some of the interview tapes of Barry George on tv. He did not do a no comment interview, he seems to have answered questions to the best of his ability, given his low mental capacity, but he has never admitted anything. You can't convict him for not telling the police what they want to hear.

> If there was any evidence to show me he had not done it then I
> would be happy to change my mind, however it seems to rest on
> two things- firstly they have not found a gun- he had over a
> year to dispose of it.

Only if he had it in the first place, a big if! Also, in our legal system, the Crown has to prove guilt, the accused does not have to show he has not done anything.

The other is DNA evidence which can and
> is being argued for on both sides, with different experts
> arguing a different theory. I would suggest that you and others
> are just as guilty of what you accuse me and others who think
> he is guilty of- ignoring all the evidence against him, the
> total lack of any evidence pointing to anybody else, using his
> mental state as some sort of reason as to why he could not have
> done it, and blaming the police for 'fitting him up'.

You are confused, there is no DNA evidence. The only forensic evidence was a microscopic chip of so-called firearms reside found in his coat pocket, which the forensic scientists appeared to have linked to the crime scene. But now they accept that that is not true, and this speck is of no evidential value. It is not part of this trial.

Can I point out that the "lack of any evidence pointing to anybody else" as you put it is irrelevant? What counts is the evidence against Barry George, not any other evidence that may or may not exist against other suspects.

Personally I would not say the police fitted up Barry George. They got round to seeing him after year because he was the local nutter, and they had got nowhere with the investigation. I think if the scientists had not found this speck of residue, and misidentified it, they would never have built any sort of case against Barry George, but if they thought the boffins had linked him scientifically to the crime scene, they must have thought they had their man. I always think you can rely too much on forensic evidence, the real world is not a lab, evidence gets contaminated and degraded, and scientists are only human and, as in this case, make mistakes.

To: Sam Slater

OK I'm with you now.

I may have twisted your words, but not deliberately I assure you.

It seems that we actually agree on this, i.e. that the judges threw out the gunshot evidence from the original trial and felt that without that evidence there was no way of knowing whether George would have been convicted or not, and accordingly that a re-trial was required.

Robches is spot on correct about George's interviews with the police.

He did not do a no comment interview but actually co-operated with them as best he could. He managed to answer all their questions without ever being inconsistent or making any damaging contradiction.

You may be right that it's not a fit-up as such. It's more likely what's called 'confirmation bias' which means the Police, having run out of ideas and leads, latch onto George and develop a hypothesis and then look only at 'evidence' that seems to confirm that hypothesis and adapt other evidence to suit eg the accounts of George as a 'stalker'.

The classic Police procedure is to establish a motive, the means and the opportunity. What was the best they came up with for a motive? That he was celebrity obsessed ? Okay, that's the combined readership of Hello, Heat, Grazia and the rest that share the same motive as Barry George. It's absurd !

No problem, James. It's easily done mate.