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Post by mick merch on Feb 4, 2005 13:46:35 GMT 1
i think when there is no forensic eveidence it can open an avenue for that idea,but burning clothes and scrubbing up may just be enough to get rid of any others
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Bobbie dog as guest
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Post by Bobbie dog as guest on Feb 4, 2005 14:59:26 GMT 1
Luke Mitchell, and members of his family did do, or were claimed to have done, things which certainly do not provide him with immediate alibi. My concern has to do with a high degree of public demand for a perpetrator. that the victim's family might have the closure they wanted: came to be a prejudiced determination; where what data there was, was squeezed into the explanation of that determination; and where even "expert" witness simply was fitting in with that collective determination. Every bit of circumstantial evidence seems to allow for several strong interpretations, which would not see Luke Mitchell as the perpetrator. Even if we were to go along with these new canons of evidence: simply because the social function served by the judicial system was considered to require a certain proportion or number of successful prosecutions, no matter what the truth in verdicts; then I believe this case to not even be safe on that basis. It's like we are still developing a calculus to apply these new canons of evidence, just as we do with numbers: but we still haven't matured that calculus, so the answers it is giving us remain wrong approximations. I just don't think that there is an acceptable logic or methodology, to the empiricism that saw Luke Mitchell convicted. It was makeshift, pragmatic, ad hoc, made to happen on the fly.
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Post by unconstitutedonred on Feb 5, 2005 15:28:54 GMT 1
Hi all, I was doing some research on Luke Mitchell when your site came up pretty high in the search options. I'm of the opinion that Luke Mitchel's guilt has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt and that the case was only brought against him because of public pressure on a police force that had spent 30million investigating the case. I'll let you read some of my evaluations on the circumstantial evidence from my site, and of the psychologists comments before I continue. BTW, I'm in no way connected with the family or the case. sittingdock.blogspot.com
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Post by Bobbiedog as guest on Feb 5, 2005 19:20:55 GMT 1
Unconstituted, I've bookmarked your site: and intend reading what you've posted more thoroughly, later, I'm in a Saturday night rush; glad to be crossing the path of those who have similar concerns.
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Post by The PhoenixAlarum on Feb 7, 2005 0:30:34 GMT 1
Thank you all for the material and evidence posted here. I've grown interested in the case thanks to BobbieDog (on another forum). It looks like a huge case of police prejudice and injustice to me honestly. The log pile with NO ASHES from the clothes he burned is particularly wierd. It's like they put together the entire story of what he did based on wishful thinking.
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Post by TheWeeMan on Feb 7, 2005 11:59:19 GMT 1
This thread has attracted huge interest inside and outside the psychology community in Scotland. Thanks to all contributors thus far. I would recommend readers have a look at unconstitutedonreds excellent blog sittingdock.blogspot.com He is a law student from England who steps outside the box. We need a lot more like him!
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Post by LetsgoBilliejoe on Feb 7, 2005 23:58:41 GMT 1
Can anyone tell me what the prosecution actually came up with as evidence against him? I've looked through the net and in the papers, but I can't see anything that would amount to the fact that he could be responsible. Perhaps I've not been looking in the right places, but what exactly was this evidence?
I could also be wrong, but it seems as if in their eyes, this was such a vile crime that someone (anyone?) had to be punished for it.
If Luke really did commit the murder, would he really have gone to where her body was? Surely he would have at least pretended to look elsewhere, why would he want to arouse suspision?
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Post by TheWeeMan on Feb 8, 2005 1:00:15 GMT 1
My understanding is that all the evidence was circumstantial, or indirect.
To persuade a jury of his guilt the Crown had to prove causation between the accused and the crime. This is done on the weight of the above. Hence the reason this proved to be the longest case of its kind in Scots Law.
The jury - and not the judge - found the accused guilty. A majority of them believed that there was more than enough indirect evidence to convict.
I've got no doubt HMA v Mitchell will be appealed. Whether it will be successful or not is another matter.
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Post by Tuesg on Feb 11, 2005 15:20:29 GMT 1
Mitchell gets at least 20 years
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Post by FairTrial on Feb 11, 2005 20:01:52 GMT 1
Donald Findlay QC was reported today (11th February) as saying:
> "So long as that young man maintains to me he did not kill Jodi the fight to clear his name will go on."
I would be interested to know if a support group or campaign is being set up to assist in the fight. I hope, also, that Mrs Mitchell and Luke himself know that there are those outside who are astonished and dismayed that there should have been a conviction on such scanty, circumstantial and (often) irrelevant evidence and who are eager to see justice done.
One specific point on which much weight was placed at the trial has been worrying me. It concerns Shane Mitchell's use of his personal computer when Luke (according to his own and his mother's testimony) was in the house. To quote the Scotsman newspaper's account:
Mr Mitchell then said: "I think I was masturbating."
Mr Turnbull: "Would you have been content to watch that sort of pornography and masturbate if you thought someone else was in the house?"
Mr Mitchell: "No."
Mr Turnbull: "Accordingly, that afternoon about 4:55pm, as you were accessing these sites, who did you think was in the house?"
Mr Mitchell: "No-one at that time."
The witness said he could not recall whether, when he arrived home, he had looked into the living room or shouted to see if there was anyone at home. He agreed, however, that he would not have done what he did without checking, and that when he was on the computer he had thought the house was empty.
Mr Mitchell must have been deliberately embarrassed and manoeuvred by Mr Turnbull into stating such obvious nonsense. If Mr Turnbull seriously believes that a young man will wait until the house is empty before masturbating over pornography in the privacy of his own bedroom, he must be living in a different universe from the rest of us!!!!!
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Post by tinchick on Feb 11, 2005 21:47:45 GMT 1
this thread has really disturbed me, and decidedly split the opinions of my family and friends. now my ISP's home page is likening this case to that of the 40's murder of Elizabeth Short, aka the black dahlia - a tad ott if nothing else. What i cannot believe is the intrinsic hatred we have for the teenage years, where an older jury can opine on the inner workings of a teenage head. If it was *that* easy harry enfield would make a better job of it! the evidence is hearsay at best, the family persecuted for other things, and the press out for 'justice' for Jodi's family. Would that it was so black and white, cut and dried. a liking of the odd, and a purportedly difficult childhood is all very well, but are we looking for proof, excuse or reason? I have the opportunity to never shut up on this subject, and the jury of devil and angel is still out as I feel that as a member of the ever increasing gang of Joe Public, i feel that the truth may well be out there, but i have yet to be tapped into it by the conglomerate press... I thought that , in spite of the cliche and the common way of thought, that a defendant had the right to innocence until proven, beyond doubt, that he or she was guilty
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Post by tinchick on Feb 11, 2005 21:57:09 GMT 1
actually, and how contrived is this, replying to own post....i can see it in my lifetime ....if Tony Blair (you can tell how rampantly Un-labour I am by not referring to him as PM ) can apologise publicly to the guildford 4 (sp?) etc . . . that, should this young man survive his sentence, the PM then will apologise to him too as a merciless campaign tactic! i don't think that the debate really arises through his guilt or opposite, but that the avenues of justice have been properly trawled.
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Post by Bobbiedog as guest on Feb 12, 2005 0:46:05 GMT 1
I would be interested to know if a support group or campaign is being set up to assist in the fight. I hope, also, that Mrs Mitchell and Luke himself know that there are those outside who are astonished and dismayed that there should have been a conviction on such scanty, circumstantial and (often) irrelevant evidence and who are eager to see justice done. I've written to Findlay, Mrs Mitchell and Luke: and subsequently spoken to Mrs Mitchell on the telephone; and have had telephone and e-mail contact with a prison visitor who has visted Luke with his mother, and as something of a supporter. I have also had it reported to me by several sources, that a professional investigative journalist is currently undertaking local research, as are other private persons. This is the best quality thread I have encountered on the net, which is addressing the Luke Mitchell issue. It is clear that a significant body of people share your concern, from a broad spectrum of perspectives, and for a broad spectrum of reasons. I have my own perspectival vein on this that I would wish to mine, in concert with others. Some meeting and concert and pooling of understandings is indicated. Personally I anticipate that the perspectives involved in overturning this verdict will be wieghty: Luke Mitchell was found guilty by his times, by the peers of his times, and through the politically driven reformist social processes of his times; overturning this verdict, IMO, will involve some fundamental perspectival countervailing of these times. That is a massive human endeavour: which means that you have to begin, prepared for a long haul, with the best of perspectival kit. This becomes one reason amongst others, why any campaign will be soft-start and slow-start. The others are that Donald Findlay has still to exhaust appeal procedures: Mrs Mitchell is still bedding into her circumstance of distress; and Luke is not yet in fit condition to take the central role he must, in any campaign on his behalf. Mrs Mitchell and Luke will meet and respond to this circumstance of theirs, in their own way. Their ways do not yet interface with those others, who might eventually work in effective concert with them. Mrs Mitchell is hurt, angry, wishing to effectively strike back against injustice done. Luke is so immured in his sense of innocence, that he is yet to fully experience the depths of his predicament. Both, perhaps, may take some time to exhaust native response: those supportive others who presently circle, as do we, have things to work out too. Immediate concern is with Luke as a still developing young man, now denied much of what was his life. Just how he is to sustain personal integrity, and then continue to grow: that is some large matter. I intend to tread water while keeping in touch with the family: and am keeping a contact list of those who have shown interest in supporting the Mitchell family; and that listing might contribute to a support group, when that begins to coalesce. If anyone wishes to join such a list: then I can e-mail updates on whatever comes my way, as information and understanding, of what is happening and being considered. My e-mail adress is : namwob.niloc@virgin.net. If anyone has better suggestions about how to sustain contact between those who might eventually form the nucleus of a campaign or support group: then I would be most grateful for such suggestion. I'll pass the news to the Mitchell family, by the conduit of relation that I have, that others think and feel as you do FairTrial. That news alone will be of great comfort to them; as it is also to me.
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Post by TheWeeMan on Feb 12, 2005 12:55:13 GMT 1
'Truly evil' murderer Luke gets 20 years' www.eveningtimes.co.uk/hi/news/5035548.html Evening Times 11th Feb. 2005. As Luke Mitchell has been found guilty by a jury of his peers, and a minimum sentence of 20 years has been passed, the onus is now entirely on him to prove some kind of miscarriage of justice in the Appeal stsge. If he can't he is, and will remain, a convicted murderer. And if he doesn't repent, as is his legal right, he will serve the full term with no hope of parole. His choice. So three questions must be asked. What evidence was presented that shouldn't have been? Remember that mere opinion here is not enough. You must say why the Crown was wrong in law. What evidence wasn't presented that should have been. Again opinion is irrelevant, what basis in law. do people say what they say? What legal criticisms can be made of the trial judge Lord Nimmo Smith? Did he misdirect the jury, not inform them of things he should etc.? Then and only then will his Appeal stand any chance of success.
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Bobbie dog as guest
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Post by Bobbie dog as guest on Feb 12, 2005 13:17:15 GMT 1
Tinchick and all other thread contributors: I'm picking up on every detail of what you bring forward in this thread; where, if this verdict is to be overturned as unsafe, every such detail has to become transmuted to be effective. When I say transmuted, what I have in mind in just how people can be overwhelmed by a collective understanding that is in fact wrong; or alternatively can come to countervail or even overthrow the basis of such understanding. Data on this can be drawn from several sources. The autistic: where a subject's understanding may be valid; but simply overwhelmed by the imposed understanding of their social context. The social and political, as in the segregationist US South, or Apartheid SA: where a black, civil rights and freedom understanding informing a subject, can be overwhelmed by the power of a circumstance. The scientific: where a paradigm which will eventually be universally adopted, because of what it scientifically mediates; can be dismissed ferociously, because of the orthodoxy which it challenges. The legal: where the innocent are found guilty. The religious and philosophical: where understanding which has validity and coherence, is absolutely rejected; again because of its seeming challenge to a prevailing orthodoxy. Historical defeat bears heavily: overwhelming, changing, perhaps beginning to destroy; those subject to such defeat. Being right, having understanding, bearing effective witness: all of these can prove on occasion to be insufficient and ineffectual; where, if the intrinsic merits of these things are to be turned to historical victory, then they needs be transmuted beyond their first naive expression. To countervail an unjust historical circumstance, you must transcend it: you must begin to grapple with what grounds and sustains that circumstance; you must prove over the long haul, to have the superior mastery of these grounds. Currently, as the global human world is in the grip of both fundamental turmoil and conflict, and coterminous projects to bring it under the aegis of competing "new" orthodoxies: events further down the social process chain, can bear the imprint of these dramatic macro dramas. In this Luke Mitchell case, individuation became a primary issue. Luke Mitchell, and his mother, were challenged as to the manner of their individuation, and the practices of its sustaining. The "causative" evidence led in the trial, and cavalierly amplified in the media: while emphasizing certain perspectives associated with collective process, and led by persons embedded in highly organised social settings; effectively precluded perspectives associated with individuation. Where the perspectives grounded in an affirmative valuing of such individuation are introduced: then Luke Mitchell is rescued from the reductive viewing which is his only lot where exclusively collective perspective is led. My hypothesis is that in the Luke Mitchell case, there is a logical lacuna: between what can perspectivally be led from two poles, that of collective process and that of individuation; where that lacuna must now be revealed, discerned, explored, tracked and mapped. That same lacuna grounds the furor concerning the "war on terror", detention without trial, reliance on unaccountable "intelligence", use of Ritalin: you name it in current social process, and there will be, in the dynamics of that thing, this stress between what emphasises collective process, and what emphasises individuation. It seems to me that psychology, as a discipline, profession and philosophy: stands preeminently favoured to address, and perhaps offer some perspectival resolution of; this tension that perhaps most characterises our time. My views have been shaped by supporting two dyslexic boys through a state provided education. Perspectives which I bring forward as saying something about these children, at least in their family setting: routinely prove to not register with those who manage this education; what we say, emphasizing processes of individuation as it does, proves meaningless, or worse, to these managers. Our only allies have been educational psychologists in the field: where they prove able to embrace what we say concerning processes of individuation; while remaining aware of what the managed aspect of education is about. They don’t necessarily take sides: all they do, and need do, is to affirm that what we say as parents, has some validity and coherence; which is sufficient to give some defense against its reductive dismissal. What we, as a family, both children and advocating parents have explored in this: is what it is like to be buried within a collectively determined social process; which reductively dismisses the perspective and ground of your individuation, and thereby your occurrence. We see this as having to do with the dyslexic specifically, although that sees us developing our own model of the dyslexic: but, in looking around at the wider world, we see the same dynamic of collectively driven reductionism, bearing onerously on so many others. Luke Mitchell may or may not be guilty of murder: but he, and thereby his prospect of fair trial has certainly been the victim of a collective reductionism; a reductionism whose intention towards individuation, should be the cause of greatest concern.
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