Murder in a Small town.

[Thoughtsfortheday]

Did anyone watch this (2nd part still to come)

Young girl Jodi Jones murdered horrifically in woods in Dalkeith, boyfriend was arrested and has been in jail for her murder for the last 18 years but always said he was innocent....

I’m from Edinburgh so was very close to home and remember the aftermath and remember Luke Mitchell’s picture on the front of every single newspaper, he never stood a fair trial from the start...

Wondered what everyone else thought about it?

The police in the area were pretty poorly equipped to deal with a situation like this. Very low crime rates, a stolen bicycle is a highlight.

Well if he did do it there was no physical evidence, no witnesses, he had an alibi and both passed a lie detector test.
His poor mother. What was she living in?
I missed that bit but it really didnt look habitable for a lady on her own or anyone really.
Poor Jodi and her family too, what a horrible tragedy.

@Nicknacky i read about them facing charges of corruption but lets face it you can't be that bad of a police officer to work in an elite terrorism unit.

@JosieJarker thats what i don't understand, how can someone ( especially a child without in-depth forensic knowledge) commit a murder that violent and bloody and have absolutely not one shred of forensic evidence on them?

@wewillmeetagain You would be surprised. I’m a detective and the “elite” departments are not that elite. You don’t need to be Taggart to work in them!

@wewillmeetagain

Also how come they can name all the other suspects but one?

I watched the programme and this was what I was wondering too.

Very mysterious

I go back and forth on what I think abs really scary how many so dodgy characters surrounding the case but reading that article above I’m now more inclined to think that he did have something to do with it..

And I may come across like I have a heart of stone but I didn’t get a good vibe from his mum at all, I mean who encourages the press into their house to a seance style shrine at the same time the girls parents are putting her to rest.

There was also a guy who commented on a forum saying her knew his brother quite well and he was an absolute psychopath who was quite terrifying to be around and had killed various pets over the year.

Put that together with her burning stuff the night of the murder that smelt weird and you have got yourself quite a dodgy family!!

@wewillmeetagain

Also how come they can name all the other suspects but one?

I wonder if that was due to age at the time of the murder? Or maybe prejudicing an ongoing separate investigation?

[quote wewillmeetagain]@JosieJarker thats what i don't understand, how can someone ( especially a child without in-depth forensic knowledge) commit a murder that violent and bloody and have absolutely not one shred of forensic evidence on them?[/quote]
Especially when they still had dirty fingernails....so obviously hadn’t been scrubbing them.

I thought this was a very sad situation.. and a definite miscarriage of justice just based on his age and lack of anonymity / interviews without legal/parental support. Imagine this now! A 14/15 yr old boy accused, named and splashed all over the media! Would never happen now, It’s unbelievable really..

@Nicknacky that's really interesting, why do you think he is guilty from a professional point of view?

I think the reason they can’t name one of suspects as he may be involved in an ongoing crime/or court case and it wouldn’t warrant a fair trial if his name was attached to this.

@wewillmeetagain To be fair, I haven’t said if I think he is innocent or guilty however I’m inclined to think guilty but that is slightly biased due to a private FB police page I’m on where there are officers who were on the enquiry have stated he is guilty (they haven’t said anything else apart from that, we aren’t daft)!

I’m going to read up more on it but I know how much work goes into murder enquiries and even when it is “obvious” who did it, the level of investigation is phenomenal. No one wants the murderer of a young girl running about free.

The programme and the media reports are only a small part of what a jury heard.

@Nicknacky thank you for sharing that, are court records something that are accessible to the public or no? I think you are right there is obviously a lot more to this case. From a personal perspective I know how much crap the media writes and how much they twist facts. A close friend of mine was murdered in a very very high profile case and the amount of crap written in the tabloids every day and the behaviour of some reporters and journalists was shocking.

@wewillmeetagain I don’t think criminal cases are although fatal accident inquiries are as I read them routinely. I could be wrong though but I’ve never seen them online.

I know what you mean about the media, I’ve read comments that I was supposed to have made. And those that a family member was supposed to have said and it was all nonsense.

The language used in this programme was interesting as it was twisted. For example, the criminologist or whoever she was emphasised the point that he was detained and not arrested.

That’s correct. At the time he would have been detained under S14 Criminal Procedure Scotland Act 1995 and that was his status. Detained.

We only started to arrest under suspicion recently. It’s a small thing but language matters.

Well it’s terrible he was interrogated as a child with no parent, no lawyer....even when he asked for one. The police on the investigating team should be ashamed.

@Covidcorvid That was the law at the time and was correct, The Calder ruling did change that and he did appeal under the Calder ruling but lost.

He would have had an appropriate adult with him during interview and frankly, his mum was his alibi so no way could she act as his appropriate adult as it had to be done above board and that would cause issues at future trial if she had sat in on the interview.

That was interesting. Why wasn't he given a chance to take a lie detector test before this, or the ma?

@rawalpindithelabrador Do mean given the opportunity by the police or his defence agents?

I thought it was very interesting during the court case duration he quite drastically changed appearance, different clothes, different hair cut, colour (long and blonde to shaved and dark)

I wonder at what point during the whole thing the key witness was asked to identify him as I think he looked completely different by the end than he did in early pictures and round the time of the murder.

@Nicknacky can probably correct me if I'm wrong, but lie detectors are inadmissible as evidence because they can be fooled relatively easily.

I don't think there's many countries that use them for that reason.
A sociopath can fool them more easily than a regular person.
If you watch the video of his lie detector test, he's sitting there with his eyes closed - which could make it easier to regulate breathing and by extension heart rate.

@SlummingAngel Absolutely, I would imagine if they were any way accurate they would have been used by the police years ago.

It would make my job so much easier if I could just hook them up to a machine. I have folk say “give me a lie detector”!!! They are usually the guilty ones who protest too much.

I thought this was a very sad situation.. and a definite miscarriage of justice just based on his age and lack of anonymity / interviews without legal/parental support. Imagine this now! A 14/15 yr old boy accused, named and splashed all over the media! Would never happen now, It’s unbelievable really.. Based on that do you think that James Bulger’s killers were innocent as well?

TBH those doing the investigating this time around reminded me of a couple Of clowns. I found it hard to take anything they said or did seriously.

Also, given all this evidence against, there hasn’t been a retrial has there? Which tells you everything you ought to know.

A jury in full possession of the facts convicted.

An appeal before some of the finest legal minds in the country upheld it.

And the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission felt that there wasn't grounds for an appeals the "new evidence" was not compelling.

But sure, people who've only ever seen the newspapers or this highly biased documentary know better 🙄

Cops don't HAVE to secure a suspect by any means possible - it's not like they haul some random off the street just to get a conviction.
Cases can be left open - Sandy Drummond or the Templeton Woods murders for example. Or they can have a shrewd idea of who is guilty but not have enough evidence to build a case.

A case built on "circumstantial" evidence is still a case - or how the hell did the police manage before the advent of DNA?

I've said for years I don't think Mitchell's conviction is safe. A 14 year old simply isn't capable of walking away from that kind of brutality without leaving a trace of himself or taking a trace with him.