‘I read’….doesn’t that always ring alarm bells when you post it? You do believe any old rubbish after all.
How would Luke benefit from Shane claiming he got home earlier than he did? If a story had been agreed between the Mitchells surely by the 3rd of July they would all be saying the same thing? If an alibi was being set up why didn’t Shane say categorically that he’d seen Luke at home when he returned home on the 3rd? Your logic really makes no sense.
It is interesting that if Shane had got home at 15.40, as he usually did, Luke wouldn’t have been home from school. This is, of course, what Shane said in his first statement. This did not help Luke in the slightest.
Firstly, do you think the police waited 3 days until they asked SM for his first statement? That they would wait 3 days before asking SM where his wee brother was between school finishing time and 1730 on 30.06.03? Bearing in mind that this was an investigation into the savage, brutal murder of a 14-year-old child -- a child who was courting SM's wee brother, and this same wee brother was the one person this savagely murdered child specifically set off to meet on the afternoon of 30.06.03?
As regards the alibi, what would've benefitted LM, and getting stories to match from the off, or stories not matching from the off, etc? We could theorise and speculate about this all day and not get anywhere; it would be futile as there are so many variables involved as to why stories may or may not add up from the outset (trauma, genuine memory loss and lies, for example; and there are people who think that stories that match from the off is a surefire sign of lies and deceit, and, likewise, there are those who think that stories that don't match from the beginning is indicative of dishonesty; such a minefield ). I revert back to my earlier points of SM saying, on 03.07.03, that he could not remember if he saw LM or not when he got in from work on 30.06.03 and that he got in at 1540 hrs. So, SM committed to neither seeing nor not seeing his brother, which, imo, is a cop-out and an ambiguous way of saying LM wasn't there. Besides, SM told the High Court that he phoned LM at the family landline from his mobile at approximately 1605 hrs and spoke to him for about 2 mins; are we really expected to believe that he forgot about this phone call within a few days? And f forgot about fixing his friend's car? No way-- he was lying. And I suspect he was told to lie by CM until they all thought of a story they could stick to (and that eventually came -- from CM on 06.07.03 -- in the form of "LM mashing tatties in the kitchen"). As I said in a previous post, it would've been impossible for these two brothers not to see or hear each other in that house in Newbattle Abbey Crescent that day, as it was merely a two-storey, detached property. The fact that SM made such a big fuss of wether or not he saw LM that day speaks volumes; he was lying. You either saw him or you didn't. No in between (such as not remembering either way if LM was there or wasn't there). How does that even work??! A cop-out of an answer, imo. SM was lying. And, as highlighted in my previous 2 posts on this thread, SM finally admitted under oath that he didn't see his brother in the house that day between 1530 - 1730. From not being sure on 03.07.03, to saying he saw him, as per his statement on 07.07.03 (which aligned exactly with CM's statement on 06.07.03, as she instructed him to amend his original statement given on 03.07.03 to match hers -- funny that, eh?), to then renegue on all of this on 14.04.04 and revert back to saying "he couldn't remember if his brother was in the house", to then finally, in January 2005, when under oath, admit verbatim: "I genuinely don't remember seeing my brother that day." Such a mess. SM, as I've shown, lied throughout the entire investigation, eventually telling the truth at court.
Btw, I suspect the reason SM & CM didn't face perjury charges was because the Crown took pity on them and felt that they had both suffered enough because of the stress of investigation and trial, and, above all, the fact LM was convicted of murder.