Author Topic: 10 things the Daily Mail got wrong about the trial of Mark Alexander  (Read 3271 times)

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Offline Daisy

Introduction

This article could just as easily have been called ‘Ten ways the Daily Mail were misled by the crown prosecution service’ because in many ways the press isn’t to blame for the inaccuracies and calculated falsehoods recited in the prosecution’s opening speech – which they perhaps naturally, albeit uncritically, relied on as an authoritative and reliable source.  Over the next few weeks I will be setting out how and why ten key “facts” were misreported by the Daily Mail both during and after my trial.

Counsel for the Defence: “The second matter is this, and it has been raised on other occasions when perhaps the press gallery has not been so full.  But there has been a concern with this case in particular as to how certain facts have been reported in the press.  Those matters have been raised with your Honour when perhaps those who seek to report on this case were not here.  On a day as important as this, can I ask your Honour to stress accurate reporting of this matter, bearing in mind that everyone has been here to listen to your Honour’s summing up?”

The Honourable Judge Reddihough: “Yes. I said, I think, when it was raised earlier in the trial, that the media must have a duty accurately to report matters in court.  It has been brought to my attention that some previous reporting of this case has contained factual inaccuracies.  I therefore hope that if there is any press reporting during the time when the jury are considering their verdict that it will be ensured that the reporting is fully accurate.”

Trial transcript for 6 September 2010

I have focused on 2 articles from the Daily Mail which appeared on 28 July 2010(the second day of my trial) and 11 September 2010(the day after I was wrongly convicted and sentenced) respectively, because these are the sources most often quoted when people ask me about my case.  The very same mistakes appeared across the board however, in media outlets as distinguished as the BBC, The Guardian, and the Independent.  In the interests of objectivity I distinguish between those ‘facts’ which are just plain wrong, and those which – at the very least – represent unbalanced reporting; the ten ‘facts’ are split evenly between the 2 categories.  I have also limited myself to the evidence that was available at my trial, rather than any evidence which has been discovered since then which the press couldn’t have known about.

Many of us take it for granted that what we read or hear in the media is an impartial and reliable account of what really happened.  Unfortunately this isn’t always the case, particularly – as here – when reporters have been led up the garden path.  Even if we can’t always take news stories on face value, it can be extremely difficult if not impossible to know which bits are right and which bits aren’t, especially if there are no alternative sources

When you face the shock of being the subject of a wrongful conviction, the most obvious mistake is that they’ve made you out to be guilty of something which you’re completely innocent of.  Until now then, it seemed a little pointless to nit-pick about factual errors when the most basic premise of all these articles was fundamentally wrong.  Yet the questions I’ve received from people over the last few months have made me realise just how important those details really are, and indeed just how prevalent these misconceptions remain, even 7 years down the line.

I hope to redress the balance over the next few weeks, mainly to avoid confusion moving forward, but also to enable those of you who’ve shown an interest in this case to tackle things from a neutral standpoint.  Only then can we get to the truth of what really happened to my father, and how I now find myself in this awful position.

By way of overview, the 5 corrections of fact conceded by the prosecution during the trial are that:

1.   My father’s body was not ‘dismembered’ or ‘butchered’.
2.   There is no evidence that my father was ‘battered’ to death. The cause was in fact ‘unascertainable’.
3.   The neighbours did not notice a strange smell coming from our house, Indeed there was none.
4.   We do not know when my father actually died. We (the defence) believe he died in October, not September (per the prosecution) 2009.
10. My father’s health had fully recovered by the Spring of 2009.

The 5 defence points that, though still contested by the prosecution by the end of my trial, were not reported from a balanced perspective.

5.   None of the items found in the house were materially or forensically linked to my father’s death or burial.
6.   My father did ‘approve’ of my girlfriend and she was ‘welcome’.
7.   I didn’t ‘resent’ my father’s ‘meddling’ and if I’d wanted to live the life I ‘wanted’ then I’d have simply left home.
8.   I would have preferred to go to Paris and had always dreamed of doing so.  My father helped me search for a flat in London instead and fully supported me moving in with my girlfriend.
9.   I wasn’t lying when I told neighbours I thought dad was in London, and I never claimed that he was living there ‘with’ me.

How the Daily Mail got it wrong

So how did these ten errors slip by the press in the first place?  What tends to happen is that reporters turn up for the first and last day of the trial and don’t bother to sit in on all the stuff inbetween.  This gives a peculiarly distorted sense of proceedings because the prosecution’s opening speech has yet to be put to the test.  By coming back only to hear the verdict, the press has no idea whether the allegations and assertions made during – in my case, a 6 week long trial – stood up to scrutiny.  The assumption made is that, if the defendant is found guilty, then the claims made in the prosecution’s opening speech must all be true.  In fact, in my case the prosecution made a string of retractions and amendments during the trial which meant that their final version of events was significantly different to the one they started with.  Since the press wasn’t there to witness these changes, it was largely unaware that they had in fact taken place.

Prosecutors take full advantage of this reality and seek to capitalize on the inevitable press coverage their opening gambit will inevitably receive in order to set the narrative of the entire trial.  When their claims are reported in the media it only reinforces the belief that they are accurate.  People’s perception of the truth is thus influenced by this tautologous legitimation process in which: the news must be true because it is based on the prosecutor’s allegations; and the prosecutor’s allegations must be true because they were reported in the news.  The defence rarely get a look in here, since they only deliver their opening speech once the prosecution has closed its case( so not until the fifth week of my trial) and usually to an empty press gallery.  This inevitably leads to unbalanced and misleading reporting, not only in my case, but in any court case where the press isn’t present for every day of the proceedings

Offline John

Re: 10 things the Daily Mail got wrong about the trial of Mark Alexander
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2017, 11:55:42 PM »
Thank you for posting Mark's comments Daisy, I look forward to reading the rest of them over the next few weeks.

His point about reporters only attending the preliminaries and the verdict is well made, I experienced that very thing with my own case.  The CPS often provide comments to the Press following a trial, comments which by their very nature are sympathetic to the Crown's position and damning of the defence. 
« Last Edit: July 08, 2017, 12:07:19 AM by John »
A malicious prosecution for a crime which never existed. An exposé of egregious malfeasance by public officials.
Indeed, the truth never changes with the passage of time.

Offline Daisy

Re: 10 things the Daily Mail got wrong about the trial of Mark Alexander
« Reply #2 on: July 09, 2017, 01:38:34 PM »
Thank you for posting Mark's comments Daisy, I look forward to reading the rest of them over the next few weeks.

His point about reporters only attending the preliminaries and the verdict is well made, I experienced that very thing with my own case.  The CPS often provide comments to the Press following a trial, comments which by their very nature are sympathetic to the Crown's position and damning of the defence.

I have posted mistake number one but this is waiting for approval by a moderator.

Offline Miss Taken Identity

Re: 10 things the Daily Mail got wrong about the trial of Mark Alexander
« Reply #3 on: July 14, 2017, 09:30:04 PM »
Introduction

This article could just as easily have been called ‘Ten ways the Daily Mail were misled by the crown prosecution service’ because in many ways the press isn’t to blame for the inaccuracies and calculated falsehoods recited in the prosecution’s opening speech – which they perhaps naturally, albeit uncritically, relied on as an authoritative and reliable source.  Over the next few weeks I will be setting out how and why ten key “facts” were misreported by the Daily Mail both during and after my trial.

Counsel for the Defence: “The second matter is this, and it has been raised on other occasions when perhaps the press gallery has not been so full.  But there has been a concern with this case in particular as to how certain facts have been reported in the press.  Those matters have been raised with your Honour when perhaps those who seek to report on this case were not here.  On a day as important as this, can I ask your Honour to stress accurate reporting of this matter, bearing in mind that everyone has been here to listen to your Honour’s summing up?”

The Honourable Judge Reddihough: “Yes. I said, I think, when it was raised earlier in the trial, that the media must have a duty accurately to report matters in court.  It has been brought to my attention that some previous reporting of this case has contained factual inaccuracies.  I therefore hope that if there is any press reporting during the time when the jury are considering their verdict that it will be ensured that the reporting is fully accurate.”

Trial transcript for 6 September 2010

I have focused on 2 articles from the Daily Mail which appeared on 28 July 2010(the second day of my trial) and 11 September 2010(the day after I was wrongly convicted and sentenced) respectively, because these are the sources most often quoted when people ask me about my case.  The very same mistakes appeared across the board however, in media outlets as distinguished as the BBC, The Guardian, and the Independent.  In the interests of objectivity I distinguish between those ‘facts’ which are just plain wrong, and those which – at the very least – represent unbalanced reporting; the ten ‘facts’ are split evenly between the 2 categories.  I have also limited myself to the evidence that was available at my trial, rather than any evidence which has been discovered since then which the press couldn’t have known about.

Many of us take it for granted that what we read or hear in the media is an impartial and reliable account of what really happened.  Unfortunately this isn’t always the case, particularly – as here – when reporters have been led up the garden path.  Even if we can’t always take news stories on face value, it can be extremely difficult if not impossible to know which bits are right and which bits aren’t, especially if there are no alternative sources

When you face the shock of being the subject of a wrongful conviction, the most obvious mistake is that they’ve made you out to be guilty of something which you’re completely innocent of.  Until now then, it seemed a little pointless to nit-pick about factual errors when the most basic premise of all these articles was fundamentally wrong.  Yet the questions I’ve received from people over the last few months have made me realise just how important those details really are, and indeed just how prevalent these misconceptions remain, even 7 years down the line.

I hope to redress the balance over the next few weeks, mainly to avoid confusion moving forward, but also to enable those of you who’ve shown an interest in this case to tackle things from a neutral standpoint.  Only then can we get to the truth of what really happened to my father, and how I now find myself in this awful position.

By way of overview, the 5 corrections of fact conceded by the prosecution during the trial are that:

1.   My father’s body was not ‘dismembered’ or ‘butchered’.
2.   There is no evidence that my father was ‘battered’ to death. The cause was in fact ‘unascertainable’.
3.   The neighbours did not notice a strange smell coming from our house, Indeed there was none.
4.   We do not know when my father actually died. We (the defence) believe he died in October, not September (per the prosecution) 2009.
10. My father’s health had fully recovered by the Spring of 2009.

The 5 defence points that, though still contested by the prosecution by the end of my trial, were not reported from a balanced perspective.

5.   None of the items found in the house were materially or forensically linked to my father’s death or burial.
6.   My father did ‘approve’ of my girlfriend and she was ‘welcome’.
7.   I didn’t ‘resent’ my father’s ‘meddling’ and if I’d wanted to live the life I ‘wanted’ then I’d have simply left home.
8.   I would have preferred to go to Paris and had always dreamed of doing so.  My father helped me search for a flat in London instead and fully supported me moving in with my girlfriend.
9.   I wasn’t lying when I told neighbours I thought dad was in London, and I never claimed that he was living there ‘with’ me.

How the Daily Mail got it wrong

So how did these ten errors slip by the press in the first place?  What tends to happen is that reporters turn up for the first and last day of the trial and don’t bother to sit in on all the stuff inbetween.  This gives a peculiarly distorted sense of proceedings because the prosecution’s opening speech has yet to be put to the test.  By coming back only to hear the verdict, the press has no idea whether the allegations and assertions made during – in my case, a 6 week long trial – stood up to scrutiny.  The assumption made is that, if the defendant is found guilty, then the claims made in the prosecution’s opening speech must all be true.  In fact, in my case the prosecution made a string of retractions and amendments during the trial which meant that their final version of events was significantly different to the one they started with.  Since the press wasn’t there to witness these changes, it was largely unaware that they had in fact taken place.

Prosecutors take full advantage of this reality and seek to capitalize on the inevitable press coverage their opening gambit will inevitably receive in order to set the narrative of the entire trial.  When their claims are reported in the media it only reinforces the belief that they are accurate.  People’s perception of the truth is thus influenced by this tautologous legitimation process in which: the news must be true because it is based on the prosecutor’s allegations; and the prosecutor’s allegations must be true because they were reported in the news.  The defence rarely get a look in here, since they only deliver their opening speech once the prosecution has closed its case( so not until the fifth week of my trial) and usually to an empty press gallery.  This inevitably leads to unbalanced and misleading reporting, not only in my case, but in any court case where the press isn’t present for every day of the proceedings

I have some questions...

1.   My father’s body was not ‘dismembered’ or ‘butchered’.
        was his cause of death attempted to be covered up?
2.   There is no evidence that my father was ‘battered’ to death. The cause was in fact ‘unascertainable’.
       was there not an issue with the post mortem report?
3.   The neighbours did not notice a strange smell coming from our house, Indeed there was none.
       So why did the police go and dig up the concrete- who contacted them and why?
4.   We do not know when my father actually died. We (the defence) believe he died in October, not September (per the prosecution) 2009.
        there must be a better way of judging  this September is very close to October...
10. My father’s health had fully recovered by the Spring of 2009.
      both forgot to mention this to DWP and  NHS ,so you and your father continued to fraudulently use benefit money?
'Never underestimate the power of stupid people'... George Carlin

Offline Daisy

Re: 10 things the Daily Mail got wrong about the trial of Mark Alexander
« Reply #4 on: July 15, 2017, 10:33:07 AM »
I have some questions...

1.   My father’s body was not ‘dismembered’ or ‘butchered’.
        was his cause of death attempted to be covered up?
2.   There is no evidence that my father was ‘battered’ to death. The cause was in fact ‘unascertainable’.
       was there not an issue with the post mortem report?
3.   The neighbours did not notice a strange smell coming from our house, Indeed there was none.
       So why did the police go and dig up the concrete- who contacted them and why?
4.   We do not know when my father actually died. We (the defence) believe he died in October, not September (per the prosecution) 2009.

        there must be a better way of judging  this September is very close to October...
10. My father’s health had fully recovered by the Spring of 2009.
      both forgot to mention this to DWP and  NHS ,so you and your father continued to fraudulently use benefit money?


The answers to all your questions can be found in the various topics.  Please read mistake 1 regarding the body.  It was not dismembered.

There was no issue at all with the post mortem report.  Pathologists do not make up a cause of death if they cannot find one and the cause of death in this case was "unascertainable."

Please re read the topic about the smell near the house.  The judge made it clear that this was never true and was a ploy by the prosecution to mislead the jury.  No smell in any case would come from beneath several layers of concrete and it is normal procedure when someone goes missing to explore all areas.

Mark last saw his father on 15th October and a witness reported seeing Sami on 1st October.  However, she was persuaded to change her statement by the police to fit in with their version of events.  At trial she stated that her first version was the correct one.

In the topic on the Serious Case Review it is clear that Sami was fraudulently claiming benefits but there was no suggestion that Mark was part of this.

I am happy to answer all questions but please do not ask ones which have already been explained in other topics or we will just end up repeating ourselves.  The aim is to find out what happened to Sami and who murdered him.

Offline Nicholas

Re: 10 things the Daily Mail got wrong about the trial of Mark Alexander
« Reply #5 on: April 26, 2018, 08:04:37 PM »

The answers to all your questions can be found in the various topics.  Please read mistake 1 regarding the body.  It was not dismembered.

There was no issue at all with the post mortem report.  Pathologists do not make up a cause of death if they cannot find one and the cause of death in this case was "unascertainable."

Please re read the topic about the smell near the house.  The judge made it clear that this was never true and was a ploy by the prosecution to mislead the jury.  No smell in any case would come from beneath several layers of concrete and it is normal procedure when someone goes missing to explore all areas.

Mark last saw his father on 15th October and a witness reported seeing Sami on 1st October.  However, she was persuaded to change her statement by the police to fit in with their version of events.  At trial she stated that her first version was the correct one.

In the topic on the Serious Case Review it is clear that Sami was fraudulently claiming benefits but there was no suggestion that Mark was part of this.

I am happy to answer all questions but please do not ask ones which have already been explained in other topics or we will just end up repeating ourselves. The aim is to find out what happened to Sami and who murdered him.

Mark murdered his father Daisy and if you, or indeed anyone else allow him; he'll have you jumping through hoops for the next however many years.

Mark knows exactly what happened to his father and he's given a few clues in some of his writings.


Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: 10 things the Daily Mail got wrong about the trial of Mark Alexander
« Reply #6 on: April 26, 2018, 08:08:02 PM »
Introduction

This article could just as easily have been called ‘Ten ways the Daily Mail were misled by the crown prosecution service’ because in many ways the press isn’t to blame for the inaccuracies and calculated falsehoods recited in the prosecution’s opening speech – which they perhaps naturally, albeit uncritically, relied on as an authoritative and reliable source.  Over the next few weeks I will be setting out how and why ten key “facts” were misreported by the Daily Mail both during and after my trial.

Counsel for the Defence: “The second matter is this, and it has been raised on other occasions when perhaps the press gallery has not been so full.  But there has been a concern with this case in particular as to how certain facts have been reported in the press.  Those matters have been raised with your Honour when perhaps those who seek to report on this case were not here.  On a day as important as this, can I ask your Honour to stress accurate reporting of this matter, bearing in mind that everyone has been here to listen to your Honour’s summing up?”

The Honourable Judge Reddihough: “Yes. I said, I think, when it was raised earlier in the trial, that the media must have a duty accurately to report matters in court.  It has been brought to my attention that some previous reporting of this case has contained factual inaccuracies.  I therefore hope that if there is any press reporting during the time when the jury are considering their verdict that it will be ensured that the reporting is fully accurate.”

Trial transcript for 6 September 2010

I have focused on 2 articles from the Daily Mail which appeared on 28 July 2010(the second day of my trial) and 11 September 2010(the day after I was wrongly convicted and sentenced) respectively, because these are the sources most often quoted when people ask me about my case.  The very same mistakes appeared across the board however, in media outlets as distinguished as the BBC, The Guardian, and the Independent.  In the interests of objectivity I distinguish between those ‘facts’ which are just plain wrong, and those which – at the very least – represent unbalanced reporting; the ten ‘facts’ are split evenly between the 2 categories.  I have also limited myself to the evidence that was available at my trial, rather than any evidence which has been discovered since then which the press couldn’t have known about.

Many of us take it for granted that what we read or hear in the media is an impartial and reliable account of what really happened.  Unfortunately this isn’t always the case, particularly – as here – when reporters have been led up the garden path.  Even if we can’t always take news stories on face value, it can be extremely difficult if not impossible to know which bits are right and which bits aren’t, especially if there are no alternative sources

When you face the shock of being the subject of a wrongful conviction, the most obvious mistake is that they’ve made you out to be guilty of something which you’re completely innocent of.  Until now then, it seemed a little pointless to nit-pick about factual errors when the most basic premise of all these articles was fundamentally wrong.  Yet the questions I’ve received from people over the last few months have made me realise just how important those details really are, and indeed just how prevalent these misconceptions remain, even 7 years down the line.

I hope to redress the balance over the next few weeks, mainly to avoid confusion moving forward, but also to enable those of you who’ve shown an interest in this case to tackle things from a neutral standpoint.  Only then can we get to the truth of what really happened to my father, and how I now find myself in this awful position.

By way of overview, the 5 corrections of fact conceded by the prosecution during the trial are that:

1.   My father’s body was not ‘dismembered’ or ‘butchered’.
2.   There is no evidence that my father was ‘battered’ to death. The cause was in fact ‘unascertainable’.

3.   The neighbours did not notice a strange smell coming from our house, Indeed there was none.
4.   We do not know when my father actually died. We (the defence) believe he died in October, not September (per the prosecution) 2009.
10. My father’s health had fully recovered by the Spring of 2009.

The 5 defence points that, though still contested by the prosecution by the end of my trial, were not reported from a balanced perspective.

5.   None of the items found in the house were materially or forensically linked to my father’s death or burial.
6.   My father did ‘approve’ of my girlfriend and she was ‘welcome’.
7.   I didn’t ‘resent’ my father’s ‘meddling’ and if I’d wanted to live the life I ‘wanted’ then I’d have simply left home.
8.   I would have preferred to go to Paris and had always dreamed of doing so.  My father helped me search for a flat in London instead and fully supported me moving in with my girlfriend.
9.   I wasn’t lying when I told neighbours I thought dad was in London, and I never claimed that he was living there ‘with’ me.

How the Daily Mail got it wrong

So how did these ten errors slip by the press in the first place?  What tends to happen is that reporters turn up for the first and last day of the trial and don’t bother to sit in on all the stuff inbetween.  This gives a peculiarly distorted sense of proceedings because the prosecution’s opening speech has yet to be put to the test.  By coming back only to hear the verdict, the press has no idea whether the allegations and assertions made during – in my case, a 6 week long trial – stood up to scrutiny.  The assumption made is that, if the defendant is found guilty, then the claims made in the prosecution’s opening speech must all be true.  In fact, in my case the prosecution made a string of retractions and amendments during the trial which meant that their final version of events was significantly different to the one they started with.  Since the press wasn’t there to witness these changes, it was largely unaware that they had in fact taken place.

Prosecutors take full advantage of this reality and seek to capitalize on the inevitable press coverage their opening gambit will inevitably receive in order to set the narrative of the entire trial.  When their claims are reported in the media it only reinforces the belief that they are accurate.  People’s perception of the truth is thus influenced by this tautologous legitimation process in which: the news must be true because it is based on the prosecutor’s allegations; and the prosecutor’s allegations must be true because they were reported in the news.  The defence rarely get a look in here, since they only deliver their opening speech once the prosecution has closed its case( so not until the fifth week of my trial) and usually to an empty press gallery.  This inevitably leads to unbalanced and misleading reporting, not only in my case, but in any court case where the press isn’t present for every day of the proceedings

Chilling
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: 10 things the Daily Mail got wrong about the trial of Mark Alexander
« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2018, 10:46:38 AM »
Introduction

This article could just as easily have been called ‘Ten ways the Daily Mail were misled by the crown prosecution service’ because in many ways the press isn’t to blame for the inaccuracies and calculated falsehoods recited in the prosecution’s opening speech – which they perhaps naturally, albeit uncritically, relied on as an authoritative and reliable source.  Over the next few weeks I will be setting out how and why ten key “facts” were misreported by the Daily Mail both during and after my trial.

Counsel for the Defence: “The second matter is this, and it has been raised on other occasions when perhaps the press gallery has not been so full.  But there has been a concern with this case in particular as to how certain facts have been reported in the press.  Those matters have been raised with your Honour when perhaps those who seek to report on this case were not here.  On a day as important as this, can I ask your Honour to stress accurate reporting of this matter, bearing in mind that everyone has been here to listen to your Honour’s summing up?”

The Honourable Judge Reddihough: “Yes. I said, I think, when it was raised earlier in the trial, that the media must have a duty accurately to report matters in court.  It has been brought to my attention that some previous reporting of this case has contained factual inaccuracies.  I therefore hope that if there is any press reporting during the time when the jury are considering their verdict that it will be ensured that the reporting is fully accurate.”

Trial transcript for 6 September 2010

I have focused on 2 articles from the Daily Mail which appeared on 28 July 2010(the second day of my trial) and 11 September 2010(the day after I was wrongly convicted and sentenced) respectively, because these are the sources most often quoted when people ask me about my case.  The very same mistakes appeared across the board however, in media outlets as distinguished as the BBC, The Guardian, and the Independent.  In the interests of objectivity I distinguish between those ‘facts’ which are just plain wrong, and those which – at the very least – represent unbalanced reporting; the ten ‘facts’ are split evenly between the 2 categories.  I have also limited myself to the evidence that was available at my trial, rather than any evidence which has been discovered since then which the press couldn’t have known about.

Many of us take it for granted that what we read or hear in the media is an impartial and reliable account of what really happened.  Unfortunately this isn’t always the case, particularly – as here – when reporters have been led up the garden path.  Even if we can’t always take news stories on face value, it can be extremely difficult if not impossible to know which bits are right and which bits aren’t, especially if there are no alternative sources

When you face the shock of being the subject of a wrongful conviction, the most obvious mistake is that they’ve made you out to be guilty of something which you’re completely innocent of.  Until now then, it seemed a little pointless to nit-pick about factual errors when the most basic premise of all these articles was fundamentally wrong.  Yet the questions I’ve received from people over the last few months have made me realise just how important those details really are, and indeed just how prevalent these misconceptions remain, even 7 years down the line.

I hope to redress the balance over the next few weeks, mainly to avoid confusion moving forward, but also to enable those of you who’ve shown an interest in this case to tackle things from a neutral standpoint.  Only then can we get to the truth of what really happened to my father, and how I now find myself in this awful position.

By way of overview, the 5 corrections of fact conceded by the prosecution during the trial are that:

1.   My father’s body was not ‘dismembered’ or ‘butchered’.
2.   There is no evidence that my father was ‘battered’ to death. The cause was in fact ‘unascertainable’.
3.   The neighbours did not notice a strange smell coming from our house, Indeed there was none.
4.   We do not know when my father actually died. We (the defence) believe he died in October, not September (per the prosecution) 2009.
10. My father’s health had fully recovered by the Spring of 2009.

The 5 defence points that, though still contested by the prosecution by the end of my trial, were not reported from a balanced perspective.

5.   None of the items found in the house were materially or forensically linked to my father’s death or burial.
6.   My father did ‘approve’ of my girlfriend and she was ‘welcome’.
7.   I didn’t ‘resent’ my father’s ‘meddling’ and if I’d wanted to live the life I ‘wanted’ then I’d have simply left home.
8.   I would have preferred to go to Paris and had always dreamed of doing so.  My father helped me search for a flat in London instead and fully supported me moving in with my girlfriend.
9.   I wasn’t lying when I told neighbours I thought dad was in London, and I never claimed that he was living there ‘with’ me.

How the Daily Mail got it wrong

So how did these ten errors slip by the press in the first place?  What tends to happen is that reporters turn up for the first and last day of the trial and don’t bother to sit in on all the stuff inbetween.  This gives a peculiarly distorted sense of proceedings because the prosecution’s opening speech has yet to be put to the test.  By coming back only to hear the verdict, the press has no idea whether the allegations and assertions made during – in my case, a 6 week long trial – stood up to scrutiny.  The assumption made is that, if the defendant is found guilty, then the claims made in the prosecution’s opening speech must all be true.  In fact, in my case the prosecution made a string of retractions and amendments during the trial which meant that their final version of events was significantly different to the one they started with.  Since the press wasn’t there to witness these changes, it was largely unaware that they had in fact taken place.

Prosecutors take full advantage of this reality and seek to capitalize on the inevitable press coverage their opening gambit will inevitably receive in order to set the narrative of the entire trial.  When their claims are reported in the media it only reinforces the belief that they are accurate.  People’s perception of the truth is thus influenced by this tautologous legitimation process in which: the news must be true because it is based on the prosecutor’s allegations; and the prosecutor’s allegations must be true because they were reported in the news.  The defence rarely get a look in here, since they only deliver their opening speech once the prosecution has closed its case( so not until the fifth week of my trial) and usually to an empty press gallery.  This inevitably leads to unbalanced and misleading reporting, not only in my case, but in any court case where the press isn’t present for every day of the proceedings

And again, Mark claimed Sami was "bed bound"  *&^^&
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Fact Checker

Re: 10 things the Daily Mail got wrong about the trial of Mark Alexander
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2019, 03:02:43 PM »
And again, Mark claimed Sami was "bed bound"

http://www.freemarkalexander.org/faq/#health
http://www.freemarkalexander.org/mistake-10

Sami was admitted to hospital 23 May 2008, and was bed-bound for several months, during which time Mark cared for him and helped him regain his strength. He was fully mobile by early 2009, as recognised by the judge in his sentencing remarks: "There is clear evidence before the court that by the time of this offence Sami had made a reasonably good recovery from the illness he had suffered"
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