Why doesn’t con artist and charlatan Sandra Lean publish killer Luke Mitchell’s police statements and transcripts, along with his toxic, abusive and psychological manipulative mothers Corinne Mitchell’s
Alex Power
Sandra Lean can I ask why after all the new information over the years and lack of evidence why nothing has ever been done or re opened investigation.
Sandra Lean
Alex Power Because, Alex, there is no will to re-examine it. It would open an entire can of worms that would be a huge embarrassment to the authorities and so they use technical legal arguments to knock back everything we uncover. Like the definition of "new evidence" - that which was not, or could not reasonably have been available to the defence at the time of the original trial. There are two immediate difficulties here - firstly, they can argue that virtually anything "could have been" known to the defence at the time (and often blame the defence for not "finding" it, even though it would have been virtually impossible for them to do so). Secondly, when they are forced to concede that something is "new evidence" (for example, the prosecution never disclosed it to the defence), they then argue that, even if it had been disclosed, it would not have had a "material effect" on the original jury's outcome.
The appeal process does not examine the original police investigation (which is the very place convictions like this are constructed in the first place), so that's not an option. Nor is a complaint to the police authorities - as recently as 2020, a report was published highlighting the failings of Police Scotland's complaints handling processes - it included things like, failure of officers to be "transparent," officers "getting their stories straight" before writing their statements, a tendency to cover for each other etc etc
The number of technicalities that have to be overcome to have a case re-examined is mind-blowing, yet the media would still have us believing that criminals are slipping off the hook because of legal technicalities and worse, that people are somehow having their convictions overturned on legal "technicalities." There are many, many people in prison who should not be there, because of an ocean of technicalities designed to keep them there, justice be damned, yet they have the audacity to claim that some who finally manage to navigate this minefield in order to have their convictions overturned are somehow "playing the system."