July 16: Michael Stone: UK: Question of the day: Was he wrongly convicted of two murders? Major Development, as reported by Guardian Police and Crime Correspondent Vikram Dodd; The CRCC (Criminal Cases Review Commission) will test serial killer Levi Bellfield's DNA as part of its inquiry into whether Michael Stone was wrongly convicted of the 1996 murders."... "The tests follow advances in DNA science which may allow previously unidentified male genetic material left at the scene where the Russell murders took place to be linked to an individual. The CCRC said in a statement: “We intend to obtain a sample from Mr Bellfield. No date has been set for this.”

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Bellfield is serving whole-life tariffs in HMP Frankland for the murders of 13-year-old Milly Dowler in March 2002; 19-year-old Marsha McDonnell in February 2003; and 22-year-old Amélie Delagrange in August 2004. He was also convicted of the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy in May 2004. Bellfield’s solicitor, Theresa Clark, said: “I’m sure he’d agree to the DNA test. He’s going to cooperate.” As part of Stone’s application to the CCRC, his DNA was taken by investigators on Thursday. Karen Todner, a solicitor for Stone, said: “There’s a whole range of things that can be done now.”

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Exhibits from the original crime scene that are still available include part of what is believed to be a shoe lace the attacker used to bind his victims, as well as sticks. Todner said a lunchbox in which a bloody finger print was found at the scene has now been lost.  (Karen) Todner (a solicitor for stone) said DNA testing previously available had shown two categories of male DNA at the murder scene. Some could be identified as belonging to Lin’s husband, Shaun, but other male DNA remained unidentified. “There is male DNA on some of the items,” she said. “New techniques possibly allows this to be matched to a person.”

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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Lin Russell and her daughters were attacked with a claw hammer before being bound and blindfolded in Chillenden in Kent in 1996. Josie was left seriously injured. There is doubt about the credibility of Bellfield and his confessions to further crimes. He has also admitted to at least six other attacks on women in London and Surrey where the victims survived in a document given to the governor at HMP Frankland, and which was sent to police. The serial killer also said he had abducted and murdered Elizabeth Chau, who disappeared from a west London street in 1999, and who has never been found. The Met disbelieved Bellfield’s confession in that case and refused to dig up a spot in west London where he said he had buried the body. Bellfield has confessed to the Russell murders, retracted his admission, and then confessed again."

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PASSAGE FOUR OF THE DAY: "Stone’s original convictions were overturned, only for another jury to convict him again. The CCRC has been heavily criticised for failings, including in the Andrew Malkinson case, wrongly imprisoned for 17 years for a rape for which someone else has now been convicted."

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STORY: Levi Bellfield to have DNA test in connection with Lin and Megan Russell murders," by Police and Crime Correspondent Vikram Dodd, published by The Guardian, on July 11, 2026.

SUB-HEADING: "Exclusive: CCRC will test serial killer as part of inquiry into whether Michael Stone was wrongly convicted of 1996 murders."

GIST: "The serial killer Levi Bellfield will have his DNA taken in an attempt to establish if he murdered Lin and Megan Russell in 1996.

Michael Stone has protested his innocence since his conviction in 1998 for the killing of Lin, 45, and her daughter, six-year-old Megan, as well as a vicious attack on Megan’s sister Josie, nine, who survived.

The DNA samples will be taken by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which is investigating if Stone was wrongly convicted after Bellfield claimed he was the real killer.

The tests follow advances in DNA science which may allow previously unidentified male genetic material left at the scene where the Russell murders took place to be linked to an individual.

The CCRC said in a statement: “We intend to obtain a sample from Mr Bellfield. No date has been set for this.”

Bellfield is serving whole-life tariffs in HMP Frankland for the murders of 13-year-old Milly Dowler in March 2002; 19-year-old Marsha McDonnell in February 2003; and 22-year-old Amélie Delagrange in August 2004. He was also convicted of the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy in May 2004.

Bellfield’s solicitor, Theresa Clark, said: “I’m sure he’d agree to the DNA test. He’s going to cooperate.”

As part of Stone’s application to the CCRC, his DNA was taken by investigators on Thursday. Karen Todner, a solicitor for Stone, said: “There’s a whole range of things that can be done now.”

Exhibits from the original crime scene that are still available include part of what is believed to be a shoe lace the attacker used to bind his victims, as well as sticks. Todner said a lunchbox in which a bloody finger print was found at the scene has now been lost.

Todner said DNA testing previously available had shown two categories of male DNA at the murder scene. Some could be identified as belonging to Lin’s husband, Shaun, but other male DNA remained unidentified.

“There is male DNA on some of the items,” she said. “New techniques possibly allows this to be matched to a person.”

Stone’s application to the CCRC names another suspect for the murder other than Bellfield. A key witness against Stone, and his supporters say the only evidence, came from Damien Daly, who claimed Stone had confessed to him in prison.

Daly was later convicted of a separate murder. Todner said: “The only evidence against him is from a person serving life for murder and whom the jury in that case disbelieved. There is nothing else against Michael Stone.”

Lin Russell and her daughters were attacked with a claw hammer before being bound and blindfolded in Chillenden in Kent in 1996. Josie was left seriously injured.

There is doubt about the credibility of Bellfield and his confessions to further crimes. He has also admitted to at least six other attacks on women in London and Surrey where the victims survived in a document given to the governor at HMP Frankland, and which was sent to police.

The serial killer also said he had abducted and murdered Elizabeth Chau, who disappeared from a west London street in 1999, and who has never been found. The Met disbelieved Bellfield’s confession in that case and refused to dig up a spot in west London where he said he had buried the body.

Bellfield has confessed to the Russell murders, retracted his admission, and then confessed again.

Stone’s original convictions were overturned, only for another jury to convict him again. The CCRC has been heavily criticised for failings, including in the Andrew Malkinson case, wrongly imprisoned for 17 years for a rape for which someone else has now been convicted."

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2026/jul/11/levi-bellfield-to-have-dna-test-in-connection-with-lin-and-megan-russell-murders

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

July 15: Alan Hall: New Zealand: (From our pass the buck department); On-going trial of two former police officers alleged to have withheld key witnesss evidence in the case, has taken the witness stand for the first time, Radio New Zealand (ReporterMatthew Theunissen,) reports: "Alan Hall spent 17 years in jail after being found guilty of Easton's murder in his Papakura home in 1985. His conviction was quashed in 2022 after the Supreme Court found a miscarriage of justice had occurred. Two former police officers, who have name suppression, are on trial in the High Court at Auckland where it's alleged they withheld key witness evidence that could have helped with Hall's defence. Key to the Crown case is the evidence of witness Ronald Turner, who said he saw a tall Māori man running across the road near to where Easton was murdered. That evidence was never presented to the jury at the trial of Hall, who is a 5 foot 7 Pākehā."

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I will be following this trial very carefully as it is very rare for police officers to be charged with perverting the course of justice decades after their conduct - way over the line - has literally caused an innocent accused person to be convicted of a very serious crime. As you will see below, in Alan Hall's case, the two  ex-police officers  are accused are accused of perverting the course of justice by  altering  the written statement of the key witness,  leaving out the reported ethnicity from the statement, while adding other erroneous incriminating information about Alan Hall into the statement and failing to disclose to the defence information about another suspect. These officers have been investigated and charged without bowing to the temptation of police, prosecutors, and politicians to expose heinous police skulduggery to the public eye.  In Tim Rees' Ontario case, police officers buried a video (discovered in an unmarked box in the police chief's office, many years after he was convicted by the jury and he had exhausted all his appeals) which utterly cleared Tim Rees, and unequivocally implicated  the deceased 10-year-old girl's  family's landlord as a viable suspect. But unlike the Hall case, no officer has been charged, it's not clear whether any of the officers  (or prosecutors) involved in the investigation have been investigated,  the case has hardly received public attention  (unlike the Hall case which led to compensation, and public rage at the police conduct which led to his being compensated, and  to a reward being offered for information leading to the conviction of the real murderer. To Ontario's great shame,  the decision of the  three judges who conducted an evidence hearing ordered by the federal minister of justice because of a likely miscarriage of justice is cold, and legalistic, and lacks the fire, the anger one would expect Ontario's highest judges to experience  when confronted by such  an unforgivable miscarriage of justice of this magnitude.  They stayed silent instead of  condemning  the outrageous, if not criminal police behaviour, which led to the imprisonment of an innocent man.  Like the Alan Hall case - 'an unforgivable miscarriage of justice.' Stay tuned,  dear readers, That's why I will be following the trial of the two officers in the UK so closely. 

Harold Levy;  Publisher; The Charles  Smith Blog.

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY:  "One of the former police officers entered the witness box on Wednesday and was asked by his lawyer, David Jones KC, about his understanding of the police's disclosure obligations at the time of the investigation. "Well if issues were serious crime and we had the Crown advising and going to prosecute, the responsibility for any disclosure rested with the Crown," the man said. Disclosure is where relevant documents about a case are handed to the defence. Likewise, the former officer felt those responsibilities lay with the Crown when Hall appealed his sentence, which he ultimately did five times. "Our role was basically to extract from the file the documents that they were seeking to place before the Court of Appeal."

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STORY: "Arthur Easton case: Former police officer on trial takes stand for first time," by Radio New Zealand (RNZ) Journalist Matthew Theunissen, on July 15, 2026.

GIST: A contradictory, unreliable, fleeting glimpse.

That's how a former police detective described evidence of a key Crown witness who says he saw a tall Māori man running across the road near to where Arthur Easton was murdered by a bayonet-wielding intruder.

Alan Hall spent 17 years in jail after being found guilty of Easton's murder in his Papakura home in 1985. His conviction was quashed in 2022 after the Supreme Court found a miscarriage of justice had occurred.

Two former police officers, who have name suppression, are on trial in the High Court at Auckland where it's alleged they withheld key witness evidence that could have helped with Hall's defence.

Key to the Crown case is the evidence of witness Ronald Turner, who said he saw a tall Māori man running across the road near to where Easton was murdered.

That evidence was never presented to the jury at the trial of Hall, who is a 5 foot 7 Pākehā.

One of the former police officers entered the witness box on Wednesday and was asked by his lawyer, David Jones KC, about his understanding of the police's disclosure obligations at the time of the investigation.

"Well if issues were serious crime and we had the Crown advising and going to prosecute, the responsibility for any disclosure rested with the Crown," the man said.

Disclosure is where relevant documents about a case are handed to the defence.

Likewise, the former officer felt those responsibilities lay with the Crown when Hall appealed his sentence, which he ultimately did five times.

"Our role was basically to extract from the file the documents that they were seeking to place before the Court of Appeal."

Turner was driving through Papakura on the night of Easton's murder when he saw a person he described as a tall Māori man acting suspiciously and running across Clevedon Road.

The former officer explained to the court how police tested this evidence by carrying out a so-called "sighting experiment", in which officers recreated Turner's account of that night. It concluded that Turner could not have determined the man's ethnicity.

The former officer was asked directly about the allegations he is facing.

"Did you ever do anything, as far as you are concerned, which would have interfered with the proper course of justice?" Jones asked.

"No I did not," the man replied.

"Did you ever have an intent to interfere with the proper course of justice?"

"No I did not," he said.

Questioned by Crown prosecutor John Billington KC, the former officer was asked why Turner's statement to police was different to the version presented at Hall's trial.

"We have some detail around his age, his height, his clothing and his mannerisms. They seem to be the same, don't they?" Billington asked. "Can you identify a difference between the two statements?"

"Well they're obviously couched in a slightly different manner," the man replied.

"The omission of the word Māori would be a difference, wouldn't it?" Billington added.

The defendant reiterated it was for the Crown to decide what evidence to include.

Billington said that as an experienced police officer, the man should have known how important Turner's evidence was.


"If Mr Turner had told the jury that the person he saw was a Māori, the prosecution case failed, didn't it?"

"Not necessarily," the man replied.

The trial before Justice Gault is expected to continue into next week."


The entire story can be read at:

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/723631/arthur-easton-case-former-police-officer-on-trial-takes-stand-for-first-time

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

Former Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby: UK: Question of the day: When will this victim of a miscarriage of justice finally be freed? Jon Robins, Editor of The Justice Gap, takes on this question (and many others) in his story on the launch of Christopher Morris's book, 'Reasonable Doubt: Examining the case of Lucy Letby (Cinto, 2026).'.."When asked what would have to happen for Lucy Letby to be released in two years, the author took an optimistic view of the likely speed of the criminal appeals system. ‘The first thing is that the Criminal Cases Review Commission needs to refer the case to Court of Appeal as quickly as possible. There is no conceivable reason why they shouldn’t do that, and I can see no reason why they shouldn’t do it quickly.’ ‘Once it has reached the Court of Appeal, this case should be expedited rapidly due to the unbelievable trauma that this woman has been through over the last 10 years,’ he continued. ‘Her life has been absolutely destroyed by a failing system, and it is absolutely incumbent on the system to now put that right as quickly as possible.’

QUOTE OF THE DAY: ‘This is not purely about justice. It is not merely about a young woman inexorably becoming a middle-aged woman, life dripping steadily away in the harshest conditions imaginable, while having done nothing wrong. It is fundamentally about patient safety. It is about whether NHS institutions will be held to account. It is about whether the police are considered too big to fail, and whether their most serious mistakes could be properly scrutinise. And it is about the ability of the criminal justice system to reflect on its own failings when it would be more convenient to blame a scapegoat. There is one unequivocal truth at the heart of this book and it is one that cannot and must not be ignored, if even the merest scrap of public faith in the criminal justice system is to be retained. The conviction of Lucy Letby is chronically unsafe. It cannot be allowed to stand.’

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SECOND QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Cleuci de Oliveira, the journalist who first approached the New Yorker about the story which ultimately led to Rachel Aviv’s 13,000 word investigation, asked what surprised him most about his own research.  ‘I used to think if you could put someone away for murder you would need actual evidence to do that,’ he said. ‘It was very surprising to me that such a flimsy case could put someone away forever not even just a life sentence, but no prospect of parole officially.’"

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STORY: "Letby book: ‘I used to think to put someone away for murder, you need actual evidence,’ by Jon Robins, published by The Justice Gap, on July 14, 2026. "Jon  Robins is editor of the Justice Gap. He is a criminology lecturer at Brighton University, joint secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Miscarriages of Justice and vice chair of the Legal Action Group. Books include Justice in a Time of Austerity (Bristol University Press, 2021), Guilty Until Proven Innocent (Biteback, 2018), The First Miscarriage of Justice (Waterside Press, 2014), and The Justice Gap (LAG, 2009). Jon is twice winner of the Bar Council's journalism award and the Halsbury Legal journalism award."

GIST: "The author of a new book arguing that Lucy Letby is a victim of a miscarriage of justice believes that her wrongful conviction could be overturned in two years.

 Speaking at the launch of Reasonable Doubt: Examining the case of Lucy Letby (Cinto, 2026), the writer Christopher Morris was asked by the Daily Mail journalist and fellow supporter of former neonatal nurse, Peter Hitchens ‘how long would it take’ for justice to be done.

‘This conviction doesn’t have a leg to stand,’ he replied. ‘There are people of the highest calibre in very large numbers saying that – and there is no one of any credibility coming from the other side.’ Morris said he hoped the case could be ‘resolved within two years’.

Over the last three years, Christopher Morris claims to have interviewed more than 60 experts from the worlds of neonatology, 

paediatrics, nursing and statistics about the controversial conviction of the former nurse on his own YouTube channel and for his podcast. 

His book has been publicly supported by high profile champions of Letby including Sir David Davies, professor John Ashton CBE, and the Private Eye journalist Dr Phil Hammond. 

The investigative journalist John Sweeney interviewed Morris at the launch event last week. Sweeney told the audience that the case was ‘a monstrous injustice’.

Morris argues that at the heart of the conviction of Lucy Letby is ‘a story that… makes absolutely no sense’. ‘There is no plausible motive or feasible psychological explanation for Letby’s supposed acts,’ he writes. ‘No one has ever seen her doing anything wrong.’ He argues that anecdotal evidence used in court was ‘phenomenally weak’; and the statistical case on which the prosecution built was ‘fundamentally flawed’.

‘The court case was brimful of eyewitness accounts that was specious and bereft of material or evidential value. 

The prosecution has erected, not merely one hypothesis, but an array of hypothetical events that are completely improbable and then spun them into an overarching narrative intended to explain the way their lack of evidential support.

 Often the prosecution even used evidence that is known to be incorrect.’ 

Morris contends that medical underpinning prosecution arguments have now been so undermined that any of the cases on which the former nurse was convicted would now fail to reach a court on their own merit.

A ‘rational’ Court of Appeal?

When asked what would have to happen for Lucy Letby to be released in two years, the author took an optimistic view of the likely speed of the criminal appeals system.

 ‘The first thing is that the Criminal Cases Review Commission needs to refer the case to Court of Appeal as quickly as possible. 

There is no conceivable reason why they shouldn’t do that, and I can see no reason why they shouldn’t do it quickly.’

‘Once it has reached the Court of Appeal, this case should be expedited rapidly due to the unbelievable trauma that this woman has been through over the last 10 years,’ he continued. ‘Her life has been absolutely destroyed by a failing system, and it is absolutely incumbent on the system to now put that right as quickly as possible.’

Morris argued that momentum had been building through journalistic and public pressure. ‘I’ve written this book because I think that what has happened is abysmal, appalling, and embarrassing. And it’s up to the criminal justice system to put that right.’

Fourteen of the world’s leading neonatologists and medical experts were involved in a report highly critical of the NHS and which found no evidence of murder in the babies deaths, as reported on the Justice Gap (here). 

That initiative was chaired by Dr Shoo Lee, whose 1989 paper was incorrectly relied upon by the prosecution expert Dewi Evans. 

According to Morris, there were now 33 experts who had spoken out about their concerns. ‘It’s staggering. I truly believe this is the greatest concentration of expertise that ever appeared in an appeal.’

Cleuci de Oliveira, the journalist who first approached the New Yorker about the story which ultimately led to Rachel Aviv’s 13,000 word investigation, asked what surprised him most about his own research.

 ‘I used to think if you could put someone away for murder you would need actual evidence to do that,’ he said. ‘It was very surprising to me that such a flimsy case could put someone away forever not even just a life sentence, but no prospect of parole officially.’

The second most surprising discovery was, as he tentatively put it, the ‘conduct of someone’. 

John Sweeney, chairing the session, interpreted that as a reference to the prosecution expert, Dr Dewi Evans who the journalist had interviewed for his own podcast.

 ‘It’s fair to say he turned up and faced the bowling,’ Sweeney reported. ‘It’s also fair to say that some of the things he said struck me as being extremely arrogant, and some of it was just plain wrong.’

The journalist continued ‘If Lucy’s conviction is based upon the evidence of this man when there is now a whole series of the world’s best neonatologists saying it’s nonsense, I would have thought any rational Court of Appeal would look at this and say we cannot rely upon the evidence.’

The audience that the launch was well attended by experts from numerous disciplines concerned about the safety of the conviction. 

One retired obstetrician and chief executive of a women and infants hospital said he had been ‘appalled’ to discover that the babies at the Countess of Chester were delivered in ‘a smallish hospital’. 

 ‘High-risk babies delivered in the wrong environment looked after by paediatricians who didn’t, in the main, have specialist training in the neonatology,’ he said.

‘I’m also old enough to remember the Birmingham Six and the Guilford Four and the photographs that appeared in the newspapers afterwards – they all looked like IRA bombers and Lucy Letby looked like Myra Hindley when I saw her on the front of the tabloids in Dublin.’

A retired obstetrician

He was concerned about the recent review led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden which found leaders at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust knew there were serious issues in its maternity department going back to ‘at least 2010’ but failed to take action. 

‘Do you think that the dysfunction that we see reported in the Ockenden report somehow increases the momentum to say that Lucy Letby is actually a victim of a dysfunctional system in the maternity and neonatal services in the NHS?’ he asked.

‘Everything we’ve heard about Nottingham, everything we’ve heard about all the previous maternity crises is mirrored in this case,’ agreed Morris. 

A retired obstetrician noted ‘incredible similarities’ between the deficiencies found by Ockenden and ‘what you have uncovered were going on at the Countess of Chester’. ‘The terrifying concern that I’m left with is that this could very easily happen again,’ he said.

‘Undoubtedly yes,’ Morris agreed. ‘These are systemic problems. It’s clear there were systemic problems with the Countess of Chester. You only need to look at them… . They weren’t doing the most basic things that they needed to do, and the fear, obviously, is that this hospital isn’t as bad as we think it is, and that actually it’s more broadly representative of other hospitals. Given that there is this incredible, chilling overlap between Nottingham and Chester, where it’s almost spooky, isn’t it?’

A retired surgeon said that he ‘always felt’ that the statistical evidence (for example, the now infamous shift rota seemingly highlighting Letby’s presence when a baby died) advanced by the prosecution was ‘non-existent’. 

He asked the statistician Professor Jane Hutton for her views as to whether the Criminal Cases Review Commission would be provided with an analysis of a sensible statistical view of the problem. 

Prof Hutton had warned Cheshire Police that its approach on the stats was wrong in relation to Letby. 

But according to the MP David Davis, speaking in Parliament, the CPS instructed the police to drop Hutton.

Prof Hutton flagged a publication by the Department of Health and the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership on how to deal with statistical outliers published in 2011.

 ‘There is no doubt there are more deaths than you might have expected,’ th academic said. ‘How do you investigate that? And it’s absolutely clear that they should have engaged a statistician.’
In defence of ‘the noise’

In September 2024, Lady Justice Thirlwall opened the inquiry into the deaths at the Countess of Chester Hospital with criticism of the ‘huge outpouring of comment from a variety of quarters on the validity of the convictions’. 

‘So far as I’m aware, it has come entirely from people who were not at a trial,’ she said. ‘All of this noise has caused enormous additional distress to the parents who have already suffered far too much.’

Christopher Morris defends himself, and others, who have spoken out on behalf of Letby in the face of criticism from the legal establishment.

 He quotes Thomas Bingham, widely recognised as the greatest English judge since the second world war, from his book The Rule of Law saying that judges ‘are not, of course, the only guardians of the rule of law, perhaps not even the most important.

 Parliamentary and public opinion, informed by the media, should be alert to detect and scrutinise any infringement’. Morris adds: ‘[No] one should apologise for highlighting the plight of Lucy Letby nor the debacle that has led to it.’

He finishes the book by talking about the psychological devastation of the wrongly convicted, including an interview with Michael O’Brien who spent 11 years in prison for the murder of a Cardiff newsagent.

‘This is not purely about justice. It is not merely about a young woman inexorably becoming a middle-aged woman, life dripping steadily away in the harshest conditions imaginable, while having done nothing wrong. It is fundamentally about patient safety. It is about whether NHS institutions will be held to account. It is about whether the police are considered too big to fail, and whether their most serious mistakes could be properly scrutinise. And it is about the ability of the criminal justice system to reflect on its own failings when it would be more convenient to blame a scapegoat. There is one unequivocal truth at the heart of this book and it is one that cannot and must not be ignored, if even the merest scrap of public faith in the criminal justice system is to be retained. The conviction of Lucy Letby is chronically unsafe. It cannot be allowed to stand.’

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.thejusticegap.com/letby-book-i-used-to-think-to-put-someone-away-for-murder-you-need-actual-evidence/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

July 15: The Reid Technique: Lincoln Nebraska: (Resistance is futile:) J.J. Harder reports on "A famed police interrogation technique (that) led to infamous false confessions in Nebraska," in a story sub-headed, "A body of research now suggests that the Reid Technique, first popularized when used in a 1955 Lincoln homicide investigation, can prompt false confessions from suspects. Law enforcement leaders say its continued use is one tool of many in an investigator’s toolbelt."... "The technique, famously pioneered in Nebraska, often leads to a police interrogator forcing his boxed-in suspect to relate details of the crime, which they then put into writing as a confession. “Innocence is not an option,” says one researcher critical of the Reid Technique. “Resistance is futile.”

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Once modern psychology took hold, criticisms of the Reid Technique came fast and furious. m Buckley told me the technique is popular “because A) It protects the innocent, and B) It is a successful process to create an environment where the guilty person admits what they’ve done, all in accordance with the guidelines that the courts have established.” But detractors argue the Reid Technique sets police up to commit mistakes. Investigators can mischaracterize an innocent person as guilty; next — presuming guilt — they may use fake evidence and accuse him of committing the crime, peppering their remarks throughout with promises and threats. Then, building off the grains of a flawed confession, they build a fictitious sand castle of guilt."

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "One researcher called the Reid Technique a “psychological pressure cooker, as its reliance on psychological manipulation, presumption of guilt and intimidation leads to suspects feeling extreme distress, putting vulnerable individuals at further risk.” Another study found the Reid Technique “too powerful” because it “can break down the innocent as well as the guilty.” One main criticism is that once questioning begins, the interviewer has already concluded the suspect is guilty, and there’s no going back. By that point, police are single-mindedly focused on securing a confession. Another problem is that its goal is to obtain a confession rather than solve the crime. This turns the investigator into a “thug or trickster whose function is to cajole or to wheedle a confession from an unwilling suspect,” according to experts. And it turns out that police can be bad at spotting liars."

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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Some parts of the country have begun chipping away at the Reid edifice. In 2021, Illinois and Oregon banned the police from lying to juvenile suspects. A Montana ruling found “lying to (a) defendant about how much is known about his involvement in the crimes is particularly repulsive to and totally incompatible with the concepts of due process embedded in the federal and state constitutions.” Hawaii has found that misrepresenting evidence may make a confession involuntary. Here in Nebraska, State Sen. John Cavanaugh has twice introduced a bill to ban police from deceiving juveniles during interrogation."

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STORY: "A famed police interrogation technique led to infamous false confessions in Nebraska," by J.J. Harder, published by The Flatware Free Press, on July 9, 2026.  (A graduate of UNL’s journalism school, J.J. Harder worked as a food critic, opinion columnist and television reporter before becoming a U.S. diplomat. Over his 19 years at the State Department, he served in Mexico, Morocco, Peru, South Africa and Syria.)

SUB-HEADING: "A body of research now suggests that the Reid Technique, first popularized when used in a 1955 Lincoln homicide investigation, can prompt false confessions from suspects. Law enforcement leaders say its continued use is one tool of many in an investigator’s toolbelt."

Darrel Parker clocked out of his job as the City of Lincoln’s first forester and walked through the door of his Antelope Park home for lunch on Dec. 14, 1955.

He was probably expecting a delicious meal. His 22-year-old wife, Nancy, developed pasta recipes for the Gooch Milling Company and had appeared on a local television cooking show.

What he didn’t expect was to find her dead body — mouth stuffed with his own handkerchiefs, hands and neck tied up with cords.

After a week with few leads, the Lincoln Police Department brought in a heavy hitter from Chicago, a former cop just beginning to be known for his ability to extract confessions like blood from a stone: John Reid.

Sitting knee to knee in a windowless room with his face a foot from Parker’s, Reid stroked the man’s head as if he were an animal, suggested his wife was cheating on him and threatened the electric chair. If the starved and exhausted Parker dropped his head or turned away, Reid would pull his chin up or jerk his head back, according to court records.

After 12 hours of questioning and polygraphs, Parker finally told Reid he had raped and killed his wife. The slaying blew up from a local cold case to a national sensation. Based almost solely on his confession, Parker would get life in prison; Reid would go on to become the most famous interrogator in U.S. history.

Thanks to what transpired in Lincoln a few days before Christmas in 1955, the controversial Reid Technique would dominate the next 70 years of interrogations in the U.S. and beyond. In interviews with the Flatwater Free Press, law enforcement groups in Nebraska defended using it as an effective tool, essentially one of many in an investigator’s toolbelt.

But there’s also growing evidence that the famed technique often fingers innocent people.

The Reid Technique is a simple three-step dance: a review of the facts, a behavior analysis interview and an interrogation.

First, police examine evidence from the scene and what they know about the suspects: their whereabouts, would-be motivation, socioeconomic details, reputation.

In the interview, police ask non-accusatory questions to fix a baseline for how the suspects respond; they gauge tone, mannerisms, pitch, gesticulations.

Then, in the final stage, the interrogators can pull out the cartoon sledgehammer: They bluff that they have evidence that proves the suspect’s guilt. They buddy up to the suspect by sympathetically justifying the crime but then hit them with a binary question whose alternatives both presuppose guilt, à la “Had you been planning it for a while or did you decide just in the moment?”

The technique, famously pioneered in Nebraska, often leads to a police interrogator forcing his boxed-in suspect to relate details of the crime, which they then put into writing as a confession.

“Innocence is not an option,” says one researcher critical of the Reid Technique. “Resistance is futile.”

***

Today, the third degree is what your spouse gives you when you come home late. Until the late 1920s, police unable to obtain confessions could resort to what they called the third degree: secretly and illegally hitting, kicking and burning suspects. Denying them food. Shoving their heads in toilets. Forcing them to walk on mats juiced with electricity.

After Great Depression-era government reform efforts and Supreme Court decisions, it became clear that the old methods had to go.

Police sought to replace violence with psychology when syringing admissions of guilt out of reticent suspects.

Experts rushed to establish new protocols that police could use in the field.

Lawyer and criminologist Fred Inbau, who at Northwestern University had helped create one of the country’s first crime labs, published in 1942 what became the most influential interrogation manual. Reid, a recent DePaul law grad, joined Inbau’s team shortly thereafter, and they co-authored the handbook’s 1953 edition.

After nearly a decade of more research and propelled by the fame from the Parker case, they published Criminal Interrogations and Confessions, which the New York Times called “the undisputed bible of police interrogation.”

Today, John E. Reid & Associates, the company still selling the eponymous method more than 70 years after it was used on Darrel Parker, says that “the Reid Technique of Interviewing and Interrogation® is now the most widely used approach to question subjects in the world.”

A nationwide survey found “two-thirds of (police) departments reported ‘most’ or ‘some’ of (their) officers” had been trained in the Reid Technique.

President Joseph Buckley, the second person to lead Reid & Associates, said Reid’s clients also include private security, insurance and credit card fraud investigators and corporations’ loss prevention teams.

Once modern psychology took hold, criticisms of the Reid Technique came fast and furious.

Buckley told me the technique is popular “because A) It protects the innocent, and B) It is a successful process to create an environment where the guilty person admits what they’ve done, all in accordance with the guidelines that the courts have established.”

But detractors argue the Reid Technique sets police up to commit mistakes. Investigators can mischaracterize an innocent person as guilty; next — presuming guilt — they may use fake evidence and accuse him of committing the crime, peppering their remarks throughout with promises and threats. Then, building off the grains of a flawed confession, they build a fictitious sand castle of guilt.

One researcher called the Reid Technique a “psychological pressure cooker, as its reliance on psychological manipulation, presumption of guilt and intimidation leads to suspects feeling extreme distress, putting vulnerable individuals at further risk.” Another study found the Reid Technique “too powerful” because it “can break down the innocent as well as the guilty.”

One main criticism is that once questioning begins, the interviewer has already concluded the suspect is guilty, and there’s no going back. By that point, police are single-mindedly focused on securing a confession.

Another problem is that its goal is to obtain a confession rather than solve the crime. This turns the investigator into a “thug or trickster whose function is to cajole or to wheedle a confession from an unwilling suspect,” according to experts.

And it turns out that police can be bad at spotting liars.

The Reid Technique tells cops that a suspect who avoids eye contact, slouches or shifts in his chair, touches his nose or chews his nails is lying. And an uncooperative or cagey subject must be guilty. Nearly a half-century of research says this is “folk psychology … complete bunk,” criminologist Richard Leo told Flatwater. By focusing on physical behavior — and thus downplaying the information the suspect is actually relaying — the interrogator becomes more and more convinced he’s across from the culprit.

Some studies have found police interrogators cannot reliably distinguish between truthful and false denials of guilt at levels greater than chance. One landmark study ranks the so-called experts at no better than the average person at detecting lies; another said it may actually be “counterproductive as a method of distinguishing truth and deception.” A 2020 study went for the gut punch: “Using his own technique, Mr. Reid could not accurately determine whether a suspect was truthful or lying.”

The Christmas stocking of U.S. police history is stuffed with false confessions, going back to at least the 1692 Salem witch trials. Rather than using proto-waterboarding seesaws, Reid practitioners play law enforcement mind games: Legal researcher Wyatt Kozinski said that “in a dynamic akin to Stockholm Syndrome, the suspect is nudged into believing that the interrogator is his friend.”

Leo concluded that “a false confession is the most incriminating and persuasive false evidence of guilt that the State can bring against a defendant.” Both judges and juries overwhelmingly find confessions to be more of a smoking gun than an actual smoking gun.

Nearly 30% of DNA exonerees in the U.S. since 1989 have falsely confessed; most did so in response to Reid-wielding police, according to law enforcement consulting group Wicklander-Zulawski.

Academics note that wrongful convictions don’t just incarcerate the innocent: They may lead to more than 41,000 often preventable crimes, because a closed case on an innocent confessor means a potentially reoffending perpetrator remains at large. And they cost taxpayers money, too. The estimated annual cost of imprisoning a person, innocent or guilty, is $65,000, and that number rises considerably if a jurisdiction must pay out damages to an exonerated person.

Earlier this year, a law professor used the Reid Technique to successfully convince Chat GPT it committed a crime it couldn’t possibly have committed.

The Reid Technique particularly increases false confessions for two vulnerable populations: juveniles and people with mental process issues. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, more than a third of exonerated minors and more than three quarters of exonerated minors under age 14 falsely confessed; the younger the suspect, the more likely the confession is false. Juveniles’ less-developed brains impair their judgment and decision-making skills. Minors often confess in order to end the interrogation; they incorrectly wager they can sort things out later.

According to a National Registry of Exonerations report, 72% of exonerees with mental processing issues made false confessions, compared with 9% of exonerees with no disability.

Some parts of the country have begun chipping away at the Reid edifice. In 2021, Illinois and Oregon banned the police from lying to juvenile suspects. A Montana ruling found “lying to (a) defendant about how much is known about his involvement in the crimes is particularly repulsive to and totally incompatible with the concepts of due process embedded in the federal and state constitutions.” Hawaii has found that misrepresenting evidence may make a confession involuntary.

Here in Nebraska, State Sen. John Cavanaugh has twice introduced a bill to ban police from deceiving juveniles during interrogation. In a 2022 hearing, Omaha police representatives acknowledged that Nebraska’s police lie to suspects. The Omaha Police Officer’s Association’s Jim Maguire downplayed the connection between Reid and false confessions, calling the bill “an attempt to fix a problem that does not exist.” Jennifer Craven, a lawyer now with Crete’s Kalkwarf & Smith, concluded in her 2023 Nebraska Law Review analysis of the Reid Technique and the bills that, “The search for truth should not require lies… The Nebraska Legislature has a responsibility to (ban deceptive interrogations).” Neither bill advanced to a floor vote.

The Parker case isn’t actually Nebraska’s most famous instance of the Reid Technique rendering a false confession. The 1985 killing of 86-year-old Helen Wilson went unsolved for four years until a deputy sheriff built a case around a teenager hearing someone bragging about the slaying.

Five of the so-called Beatrice Six defendants ended up giving false confessions. In 2008, Joseph White, the sixth, convinced a court to allow DNA testing of blood and semen from the crime scene, which led to the group’s exoneration, after collectively serving more than 70 years in prison. The New Yorker called it “the largest DNA exoneration involving false confessions in the history of the American judicial system.”

Reid and Miranda

Controversy over the Reid Technique cuts to a deeper problem of detainees’ rights. The famous 1966 Miranda v. Arizona case — often touted as a civil rights victory — blessed police falsely telling suspects their fingerprints were found at the crime scene. The case cites the Reid Technique 10 times — never in a positive light — implying it is third degree-adjacent; it says the technique “trades on the weakness of individuals” as a reason why police must read suspects’ their rights.

Three years later, the Supreme Court affirmed the police’s right to lie to suspects during interrogations. Police may legally say a codefendant ratted him out or eyewitnesses placed him at the scene — complete fabrications. As Reid critic Saul Kassin told The Marshall Project, “Once you start down the road of using trickery and deception, the misuses are inherent in that. There are no clear lines of, ‘This is a good amount of trickery, and this isn’t.’”

Miranda focuses on informing a suspect of his rights.

Innocent suspects underestimate their Miranda rights because they embody a “phenomenology of innocence — a naive faith in the exculpatory power of their own innocence,” according to researcher Saul Kassin. More than four-fifths of suspects waive their Miranda rights.


Reid’s stranglehold has been slowly loosening for decades. For a quarter century, English police, rather than seeking confessions, have been using a method that has them ask open-ended questions and then pinpoint inconsistencies that overwhelm a liar.

Canadian police have adopted the nonconfrontational “cognitive interview” to similarly encourage the subject to narrate at length — without confession as the goal. Research on the Strategic Use of Evidence technique shows that suspects who do not know about the evidence against them are more likely to give statements contradicting that evidence. The suspect gets dinged on inconsistencies, alerting investigators to deception. Unlike the Reid Technique, non-accusatorial, rapport-based approaches render accurate information.

Even in the Reid-saturated U.S., leading police consulting group Wicklander-Zulawski stopped teaching the Reid Technique almost a decade ago.

The newest research proposes videotaping of all suspect interviews, a science-based model of investigative interviewing, mandated defense attorney presence and limits on confrontational interrogations like Reid. The FBI, the District of Columbia, and 30 states — including Nebraska — now require police to videotape interrogations.

Both the Lincoln Police Department and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office count Reid as tools investigators may use if they have attended optional training. LPD’s Todd Kocian told me that “in some cases, concepts taught in the Reid curriculum are appropriate … The approach to successful communication is ever changing and varies from person to person, topic to topic, incident to incident.”

Capt. Nathan Kovarik of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office says that deputies learn a variety of techniques in the academy, and that a deputy last attended a Reid training about four years ago.

“There might be a time and a place for that in an interview room,” Novarik, a captain with the criminal investigations bureau, said of the Reid Technique. “If it’s used ethically and properly, it probably could elicit some confessions from some suspects.”

Darrel Parker recanted the day after he made his confession, but it was too late. Only in 1969, after 13 years in prison, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the confession had been coerced and ordered a retrial. Prosecutors washed their hands and offered Parker parole; he moved to Iowa and restarted his life.

In 1988, almost a decade into running the parks department in Moline, Illinois, Parker was probably overjoyed to learn about another death: Nebraska death row inmate Wesley Peery, Parker’s colleague who years before had secretly confessed to killing Nancy Parker and 12 other people, suffered a heart attack. Bound by attorney-client privilege, Peery’s lawyers couldn’t tell anyone until after he died. Police had questioned and polygraphed Peery, an ex-con with a long criminal record, before calling in Reid. In Parker’s trial — during which Peery went to prison for raping a woman in Sarpy County — the jury learned Peery’s car was parked in front of the Parker residence the day of the slaying.

The Nebraska Board of Pardons granted Darrel Parker a full pardon in 1991, and — thanks to 2009’s Wrongful Conviction and Imprisonment Act — in 2012 the state gave him half a million dollars, a full exoneration and an apology.

Parker died in 2022, age 90.

It is still legal for police across Nebraska to lie to suspects.""

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.1011now.com/2026/07/09/famed-police-interrogation-technique-led-infamous-false-confessions-nebraska-we-still-use-it/

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

July 14: Alan Hall: New Zealand: Major (Welcome) Development: A judge has ruled that the case and proceed against two former police officers alleged to have withheld evidence in his trial, 1 News (Reporter Simon Mercep) reports, noting that: "Hall was convicted of the 1985 murder of Arthur Easton in the Auckland suburb of Papakura. Alan Hall spent 19 years in jail. The Supreme Court quashed his conviction in 2022, finding a substantial miscarriage of justice. He was awarded just under $5 million, the highest compensation payout in New Zealand. At a judge-alone trial in Auckland, the Crown has argued the two former officers deliberately omitted part of a description of a possible offender given by witness Ronald Turner. In his initial statements, Turner described the man as Māori, but this description was not put before the jury in the original trial or at appeal. Alan Hall is Pākehā."

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I will be following this trial very carefully as it is very rare for police officers to be charged with perverting the course of justice decades after their conduct - way over the line - has literally caused an innocent accused person to be convicted of a very serious crime. As you will see below, in Alan Hall's case, the two  ex-police officers  are accused are accused of perverting the course of justice by  altering  the written statement of the key witness,  leaving out the reported ethnicity from the statement, while adding other erroneous incriminating information about Alan Hall into the statement and failing to disclose to the defence information about another suspect. These officers have been investigated and charged without bowing to the temptation of police, prosecutors, and politicians to expose heinous police skulduggery to the public eye.  In Tim Rees' Ontario case, police officers buried a video (discovered in an unmarked box in the police chief's office, many years after he was convicted by the jury and he had exhausted all his appeals) which utterly cleared Tim Rees, and unequivocally implicated  the deceased 10-year-old girl's  family's landlord as a viable suspect. But unlike the Hall case, no officer has been charged, it's not clear whether any of the officers  (or prosecutors) involved in the investigation have been investigated,  the case has hardly received public attention  (unlike the Hall case which led to compensation, and public rage at the police conduct which led to his being compensated, and  to a reward being offered for information leading to the conviction of the real murderer. To Ontario's great shame,  the decision of the  three judges who conducted an evidence hearing ordered by the federal minister of justice because of a likely miscarriage of justice is cold, and legalistic, and lacks the fire, the anger one would expect Ontario's highest judges to experience  when confronted by such  an unforgivable miscarriage of justice of this magnitude.  They stayed silent instead of  condemning  the outrageous, if not criminal police behaviour, which led to the imprisonment of an innocent man.  Like the Alan Hall case - 'an unforgivable miscarriage of justice.' Stay tuned,  dear readers, That's why I will be following the trial of the two officers in the UK so closely. 

Harold Levy;  Publisher; The Charles  Smith Blog.

-------------------------------------------------

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Today, defence lawyer David Jones KC argued there was insufficient evidence to prove the Crown case. He said that when Turner gave evidence last week he was not sure about the ethnicity of the person he saw near the scene. The defence also argued there was insufficient evidence to show the two former officers knew about the original Turner statement not being disclosed. Justice Ian Gault dismissed the application, and will release his reasons later."

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STORY: "Judge rules case to proceed against former police officers in Alan Hall case," by  Senior Reporter Simon Mercep, published by 1 News, on July 14, 2026.

SUB-HEADING: "High Court judge dismisses call for trial of two former police officers to be thrown out."

SUB-HEADING: "Defence lawyers argued there isn't enough evidence to show the defendants perverted the course of justice in the Alan Hall case."

GIST: "A High Court judge today dismissed an attempt by defence counsel to throw out a case against two former police officers accused of perverting the course of justice.

The two defendants, whose names are suppressed, are charged with withholding evidence in the trial of Alan Hall. Hall was convicted of the 1985 murder of Arthur Easton in the Auckland suburb of Papakura.

Alan Hall spent 19 years in jail. The Supreme Court quashed his conviction in 2022, finding a substantial miscarriage of justice. He was awarded just under $5 million, the highest compensation payout in New Zealand.

At a judge-alone trial in Auckland, the Crown has argued the two former officers deliberately omitted part of a description of a possible offender given by witness Ronald Turner.

In his initial statements, Turner described the man as Māori, but this description was not put before the jury in the original trial or at appeal. Alan Hall is Pākehā.

Today, defence lawyer David Jones KC argued there was insufficient evidence to prove the Crown case. He said that when Turner gave evidence last week he was not sure about the ethnicity of the person he saw near the scene.

The defence also argued there was insufficient evidence to show the two former officers knew about the original Turner statement not being disclosed.

Justice Ian Gault dismissed the application, and will release his reasons later.

The defence is expected to call its witnesses tomorrow. Summing up may take place at the end of the week."

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/07/14/judge-rules-case-to-proceed-against-former-police-officers-in-alan-hall-case/#

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

July 14: Jailhouse informants: Paul Skaldic; Major (Welcome) development: Sarah Andrews reviews Pamela Collof's debut book in The Texas Chronicle, under the heading, "Catch the Devil Reveals a Criminal Justice System Caught Up in Its Own Delusions,"... "Both daunting and enraging, Catch the Devil burns down the illusory details of a “solved” murder case from the 1980s and wipes away the ash to reveal the sinister and self-serving criminal justice system beneath. Colloff is not under any delusion that her story will bring justice to Jim Dailey or fix the corrupt system that locked him up. To the reader, Colloff has just one thing to say: “This is happening, and you need to look at it.”

BACKGROUND: (From a previous post of this Blog (May 12, 2019); (Link Below); "I’ve wanted to write about jailhouse informants for a long time because they often appear in troubled cases in which the other evidence is weak. Their testimony is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions, including in capital cases. My hope is that this story will foster a larger discussion about the corrosive effect that prosecutors’ reliance on jailhouse informants can have on our criminal justice system."

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STORY: "Catch the Devil Reveals a Criminal Justice System Caught Up in Its Own Delusions," by  Author Sarah Andrews, published by The Texas Chronicle, on July 9, 2026.

SUB-HEADING: "Austin-based journalist Pamela Colloff chronicles a series of Gulf Coast cons in her first book." 

GIST: "Paul Skalnik, Pamela Colloff says, is “effervescent.” He’s as well-spoken as he is well-read, with a quick mind and striking blue eyes. But he’s also a master manipulator, a true con artist. Sklanik has been convicted of fraud, grand theft, and even child sexual abuse. He’s married nine women, some of them at the same time. He’s never who he says he is, whether it is a Vietnam veteran, a star UT football player, or a successful lawyer.

For over three decades, Skalnik traveled across the Gulf Coast, uprooting people’s lives and setting deceitful traps. In and out of jails in Florida and Texas, Skalnik found a way to dodge harsh punishment for his never-ending string of thefts, assaults, and frauds. As a jailhouse witness, Skalnik spent years pinning violent crimes on his fellow inmates, propped up by shoddy and fabricated confessions. In return for his testimonies, Skalnik would have sentences shortened and his own convictions overturned.

Colloff tries relentlessly to unravel Paul Skalnik’s web in her new book, Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast (July 14, Knopf). Years of tenacious reporting and unflinching dedication for The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica led the journalist to a gripping revelation about the harsh truths of a criminal justice system that has long been caught up in lies.

Colloff first caught wind of Skalnik back in 2018, when Laura Fernandez, a lecturer at Yale Law, sent her a pleading email, asking Colloff to turn her investigative eye toward a Florida death row case she believed was wrongfully determined.

“This is in the pile of hundreds of emails of stories like this,” Colloff admits.

What caught her eye was not Fernandez’s case but a note at the bottom, where she alluded to Paul Skalnik’s role in the situation. From there, Colloff began investigating Sklanik’s countless testimonies as a jailhouse witness.

In 2019, Colloff published her investigation into Skalnik. After she finished reporting, Colloff realized the story wasn’t done yet.

“I feel like I’m at the beginning of this, not the end. It just felt like there was so much else,” she recalls thinking. The story reminded her of the opening scene of Goodfellas, a three-minute-long trailing shot, rife with detail.

Colloff’s book follows one case in particular: the conviction of James Dailey for the gruesome murder of a teenage girl. Based on shaky witnesses and drunken details, Dailey has spent decades awaiting an execution date on Florida’s notorious death row. The nail in the coffin of Dailey’s trial is a vicious and perjured testimony from Skalnik and other jailhouse witnesses claiming Dailey made a private confession.

The book is awash with contradictions and a decidedly unreliable narrator. The binary of reality and falsity is thrown out, as all of the evidence is alleged or redacted. Sworn affidavits are rejected, polygraph tests are disregarded, and the quiet pleas of innocence from a man whose state is trying to kill him are ignored, all in allegiance to an unjust system. The long, unbelievable story is a Gulf Coast heat flush to your cheeks, as anger mounts and truth falls away.

“The whole book, in a sense, is about storytelling. And, not necessarily what the truth is, but what story you choose to believe,” Colloff says. “If you pick the wrong story, if you get tunnel vision, if you double down on the unreliable narrator, really bad things are going to happen.”

A justice system that decides who is expendable, based on convenience rather than fact, is not just at all, and Colloff does not let you forget it. The story finds a shiny villain in Skalnik, but the less flashy truth is that the network of prosecutors, governors, and attorneys that weaponized his lies is really to blame.

“To think of Skalnik as the villain – not that he didn’t do terrible things – but he’s not the person you need to be mad at,” Colloff says. “He’s a fixture of a much larger system that made him much more powerful.” She brings you back again and again to the victims: the freckled, mousy-haired young girls and the defeated, hopeless, and wrongfully convicted men alike.

Both daunting and enraging, Catch the Devil burns down the illusory details of a “solved” murder case from the 1980s and wipes away the ash to reveal the sinister and self-serving criminal justice system beneath. Colloff is not under any delusion that her story will bring justice to Jim Dailey or fix the corrupt system that locked him up. To the reader, Colloff has just one thing to say: “This is happening, and you need to look at it.”

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/catch-the-devil-reveals-a-criminal-justice-system-caught-up-in-its-own-delusions/#

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

Friday: July 17: Brian Buckle. UK. (Suspicion that the DNA could have been 'planted' pervaded the case;) For shame! This falsely convicted man who reportedly spent 500k pounds trying to clear his name, has been rejected for compensation, BBC News, Reporters Claire Kendall and Stephen Fildes) reports, noting that: "The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) rejected Buckle's first appeal for compensation last year, prompting the former Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones to intervene. But he recently discovered that his second appeal has also been rejected. The UK government said it acknowledged the grave impact of miscarriages of justice and was committed to helping people rebuild their lives. A long-awaited review of the criminal appeals system in England and Wales, carried out by the Law Commission, said its report on compensation would be published this year.

BACKGROUND: "The family also had to meet the costs of fighting the conviction themselves. Using inheritance money, gifts from relatives and loans, they were able to put together a fund. Every line of the prosecution's case was studied, looking for anything that could help Brian. Private investigators and forensics experts were called upon.  A major breakthrough came during analysis of the DNA samples used in the first trial, which a forensics expert re-tested. Brian's barrister knew the findings would cast doubt on the original conviction. He successfully applied for a Court of Appeal hearing where he told the three judges the DNA could have been planted. Despite this, the Buckles had been told not to get their hopes up as this was simply a preliminary hearing. Brian watched the proceedings from prison over a video link but found them difficult to follow. Then the clerk of the court spoke to him. "He said to me: 'Mr Buckle, do you know what's happening here now?' And I said: 'No, not really.'" The clerk said Brian would be released immediately: "The paperwork will be there within the hour. You're going home." The judges had quashed all 16 guilty verdicts. They cited the new DNA evidence and said they had no confidence that the jury had considered each count separately. The prison officers told Brian they had never before seen an inmate released immediately as a result of such a decision. But any hopes this was the end of Brian's fight faded a few days later when the Crown Prosecution Service announced it was seeking a retrial. In May 2023, Brian was back in court fighting for his freedom a second time. Now, however, Brian's legal team had a much more detailed defence and access to the newly uncovered forensic evidence. Three weeks into the trial, the jury began deliberating. After just one hour and 20 minutes, the court usher told Brian the verdicts were in.  "All I could think about at that point was, 'What if I go back to prison?'" Brian recalls. "And then the foreman [went] through the 16 counts, and every single count - not guilty." After two trials and more than five years in prison, Brian was a free man."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66928735

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PASSAGE  ONE OF THE DAY: "Buckle, from Fishguard, was convicted of historical child sex abuse in 2017 and sentenced to 15 years in prison.  His family, including his wife Elaine, vowed to fight for his freedom as they were convinced of his innocence. A five-year legal battle resulted in the Court of Appeal finding Buckle's conviction unsafe and he was immediately released from prison.  In a retrial at Swansea Crown Court in 2023, Buckle's barrister Stephen Vullo KC produced new forensic evidence and witnesses, which resulted in a swift unanimous verdict of "not guilty".

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The MoJ  (Ministry of Justice) said it would consider the Law Commission review's findings before deciding on any action in this area."

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PASSAGE THREE  OF THE DAY: "Andrew Malkinson, who served more than 17 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of rape, had his conviction overturned due to DNA evidence which proved he did not commit the crime. But was left destitute while waiting for compensation.  Widespread media attention of Malkinson's case resulted in him receiving an interim payment in February 2025. He described the system as "not fit for purpose".     

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STORY: "Falsely convicted man who spent £500k clearing his name is rejected for compensation," by Reporters Claire Kendall and Stephen Fildes, published by CBC News, on July 4, 2026."

SUB-HEADING: "Brian Buckle spent five years in prison for crimes he did not commit."

GIST: "A man who was falsely convicted and spent more than five years in prison has said he felt "sick" to learn that his compensation claim has been rejected again.

Brian Buckle, from Pembrokeshire, was completely cleared of the sex abuse charges he was jailed for, but the struggle to clear his name cost him £500,000.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) rejected Buckle's first appeal for compensation last year, prompting the former Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones to intervene. But he recently discovered that his second appeal has also been rejected.

The UK government said it acknowledged the grave impact of miscarriages of justice and was committed to helping people rebuild their lives.

A long-awaited review of the criminal appeals system in England and Wales, carried out by the Law Commission, said its report on compensation would be published this year.

Buckle, from Fishguard, was convicted of historical child sex abuse in 2017 and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

His family, including his wife Elaine, vowed to fight for his freedom as they were convinced of his innocence.

A five-year legal battle resulted in the Court of Appeal finding Buckle's conviction unsafe and he was immediately released from prison.

In a retrial at Swansea Crown Court in 2023, Buckle's barrister Stephen Vullo KC produced new forensic evidence and witnesses, which resulted in a swift unanimous verdict of "not guilty".

Brian and his wife Elaine, who remained convinced of her husband's innocence

But proving his innocence cost Buckle and his family £500,000, and the impact on his mental health has been severe.

"I suffer with PTSD, I'm on medication, I'm just always on edge," he said.

"As a family it's been really hard, it's the most horrendous thing I've ever had to go through."

After Buckle was rejected for miscarriages of justice compensation in 2024, his MP, Ben Lake, hosted a debate in Westminster to raise the issue.

Buckle's case was also mentioned in the House of Commons, and former justice minister Davies-Jones said she wanted to restore his faith in the criminal justice system.

When the MoJ then agreed to review Buckle's application for compensation, Buckle, Vullo and Lake were hopeful that the support they had received from the government would make a difference.

But in April, the MoJ told Buckle that despite a further review, compensation could not be awarded as his claim did not meet the criteria against the statutory test.

Confusingly for Buckle, the letter also said: "We would want to highlight that this decision does not affect the fact that Mr Buckle's conviction was quashed, nor does it cast doubt on the outcome of the appeal."
'Not fit for purpose'

Lake, who has campaigned for his constituent for the past two years, said the case was one of the clearest injustices he had come across in his nine years as an MP.

He said he was "so disappointed" by the outcome, as he hoped the review would have resulted in a payout "for what the state has done to Brian".

"I'm not going to let this lie. If that means that I'm to drag ministers to the House of Commons or Westminster Hall, and table questions until they finally do the right thing, then so be it."

Buckle's compensation claim was rejected due to a subtle but important change in the law in 2014.

Previously, compensation was paid out if the claimant had established, beyond reasonable doubt, that any reasonable jury could not convict on the evidence provided.

In Buckle's retrial the jury found him "not guilty" after hearing new witnesses and forensic evidence, which would have made him eligible for a payout.

But since 2014, compensation is only paid to those who can prove they did not commit the crime, which Vullo said was impossible as no DNA or CCTV evidence exists to conclusively prove Buckle's innocence.

"If you were to ask me to draft a piece of legislation that would ensure that almost everybody was turned down for compensation, I'd draft something similar to this [current law]," said Vullo.

"It's not by mistake, it's intentional," he claimed.

An MoJ assessment on the impact into the law change at the time stated that the intended effect was to lessen the burden on taxpayers.

Miscarriages of justice compensation has become an increasingly contentious issue.

In 2024, the Law Commission was asked by the UK government to include compensation and support for the wrongly convicted in its ongoing review of criminal appeals for England and Wales.

Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own compensation schemes for miscarriages of justice.

The Post Office Horizon computer system scandal has been described as one of the UK's most widespread miscarriages of justice.

Four separate compensation schemes have been established for victims to receive pay-outs, as they would not have been eligible under the scheme which rejected Brian's application.

Andrew Malkinson, who served more than 17 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of rape, had his conviction overturned due to DNA evidence which proved he did not commit the crime. But was left destitute while waiting for compensation.

Widespread media attention of Malkinson's case resulted in him receiving an interim payment in February 2025. He described the system as "not fit for purpose".

The Law Commission published provisional proposals in February 2025 which included reversing the 2014 law change so the wrongly convicted would only have to prove their innocence on the balance of probabilities, rather than beyond reasonable doubt.

It has now announced that due to the considerable public interest in the findings, the section on compensation has been prioritised and will be published first, at the end of 2026.

Buckle hopes that any change will be applied retrospectively to include him and others who have been affected, and restore his faith in the criminal justice system.

Davies-Jones said she was deeply sorry to hear that Buckle's application had been unsuccessful again and recognised there were wider questions about the compensation scheme.

The MoJ said it would consider the Law Commission review's findings before deciding on any action in this area."

The entire story can be read at:

ttps://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66928735

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;