Luke Mitchell trial transcript/case discussion

  Some notes regarding blood staining at the locus, from forensic officer Derek Scrimger's transcript  Alan Turnbull QC (prosecution): "We see, I think, from the first sentence of your report, Mr Scrimger, that a significant amount of rain had fallen prior to your arrival. (Mr Scrimger arrived at the locus at approximately 8am/8.15am). Derek Scrimger: That's correct AT QC: And the surfaces around are wet?  DS: They were, yes AT QC: Was it apparent that there were areas of blood staining around on the ground?  DS: Yes. A Few, yes. AT QC: And would the rain have affected that at all? DS: It had significantly, yes Two areas of blood staining were identified on the wall - one was a contact stain and the other was 'spots, large spots and splashes'. The stains were low down and close to each other on the wall. There were two pieces of wood on the ground with blood that Scrimger believed to be drips.  DS had said that the assailant wouldn't necessarily be blood staine...

So far, I've refrained from commenting on the matter of guilt or innocence and focused primarily on trying to highlight misinformation in the Luke Mitchell campaign - which unfortunately, there is a lot of. However, through stripping away the misinformation and lies about the victim's family, I inevitably do now have questions. Here are some of them:  Number 1: Luke knew to turn left immediately after climbing through the V break One of the biggest grievances for campaigners in support of Luke Mitchell's innocence, was that the other three members of the search party (Jodi's gran, sister and sister's then partner, often referred to as the search 'trio') present when Luke found the body, changed their statements. It was said that they all agreed with Luke in their first statements, that his dog had found the body, but later changed this to say that he had walked straight to the wall. We were told that the jury knew nothing of it. This can be found in various ...

  One of the prosecution's main points when it came to the case against Luke Mitchell VS HMA for the murder of 14 year old Jodi Jones (2004/5), was that he had known the exact location of her mutilated body which lay behind a wall, out of sight from the main path - and that he could only have known this if he had killed her. Luke's defence was that his trained tracker dog, Mia, had alerted him to the position of the body. But Jodi's body lay over 17 yards to the west/left of where Luke had climbed over the wall. After climbing over, he turned in this direction and was able to see her body in the dark in seemingly a matter of seconds. In his own words, he climbed over and turned "immediately" left. He explained that he did this because as he and Jodi's gran (Alice Walker), sister (Janine) and her then partner Steven Kelly, were walking down the path looking for Jodi, he and his dog had walked slightly ahead, and at around 20 yards past the break in the wall, th...

  Based on logic and available evidence, it's more likely they met around 11.25pm What Sandra Lean claims  Page 146/147 of the book Innocents Betrayed One of the most glaring anomalies in the search trio going to the path story is that of the timing. If Luke was, indeed, at the Newbattle entrance at 10.59pm (as all of the known evidence suggests) and if he made his way directly up the path after that phone call, he would be expected to have reached the junction of the paths, where the search trio was waiting, at around 11.10pm. The trio spotted Luke’s torch when he was between half and two-thirds of the way up the path and waited for him to reach them, therefore, they must have been there before 11.10pm. There was a short discussion before the decision was taken to “double check” the path and they all started walking slowly back down. Janine and Steven reported having to slow down to allow Alice to catch up on a few occasions.  If the search trio arrived at the other ...