QUOTE OF THE DAY: Plummer’s solicitor, Annalisa Moscardini, said: “Justin Plummer is finally vindicated for his 28-year fight against this murder conviction. Due to his refusal to accept his guilt for a crime he has always been clear he did not commit, he has served far longer than his minimum term of 16 years. He even slept on a cell floor to protest. Justin’s determination and resilience has finally paid dividends, and he will sleep tonight a free man, for the first time in 28 years.”
------------------------------------------
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "This time the prosecution relied on an alleged confession made by Plummer to a by then dead cellmate, Christopher Dunne. Dunne, who had schizophrenia, was a police informant and not been cross-examined at the original trial. Plummer’s team said the hearsay evidence was unreliable. On Wednesday, in less than 10 minutes, the Court of Appeal quashed the 2023 conviction. The three judges ruled: “We consider that this conviction is unsafe because the Dunne hearsay evidence should have been withdrawn from the jury even if it was properly admitted in the first place. Mr Plummer’s evidence does not support the “confession” evidence and gives rise to further serious concerns.”
-------------------------------------------------
STORY: "Justin Plummer: Wrongly convicted twice, finally freed after 28 years," published by Inside Time reports, on August 15, 2025. (Inside Time Limited is a ‘not for profit’ publishing company producing insidetime – the monthly newspaper for prisoners. Any profits made by Inside Time Limited are automatically donated to The New Bridge Foundation. Each month over 60,000 copies of each issue are distributed free of charge to all prisons and special hospitals plus many secure units and hostels throughout the UK. There is also an extensive mailing list of individuals and organisations involved in penal affairs.)
GIST: "The Court of Appeal has – for a second time – quashed the conviction of a man who has spent 28 years in jail for a violent murder of which he has always claimed he was innocent.
Justin Plummer, now 54, was convicted of the murder of 38-year-old Janice Cartwright-Gilbert in 1998, a year after she was attacked at the building site of her future home in Bedfordshire. Her body was found in a burning caravan with stab wounds, a knife and scissors sticking out of her neck, and strangled with an electrical wire.
Plummer was a prolific burglar with 24 convictions in the four months leading up to the killing, but none involved violence. There was no DNA linking him to the murder, no stolen items were recovered, and there were no witnesses.
The original conviction relied almost entirely on footwear mark evidence – an imprint on Ms Cartwright-Gilbert’s head alleged to match a size 6 Nike Air Screech trainer that Plummer wore. The case also partly hinged on the prosecution’s argument that Plummer’s brother, Adam, had discussed his being a suspect with their mother before he was arrested. Therefore, they said, Justin Plummer must be guilty.
The expert witness who provided the trainer evidence, David Lewin, was a dentist with no qualifications in footwear forensics. At the original trial, the judge said of Lewin’s evidence: “It was one of the clearest marks he had ever seen. No other shoe could have caused it.” But Lewin’s method was later ruled “neither validated nor suitable … even by 1990s standards”.
In 2021, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred Plummer’s conviction to the Court of Appeal. In 2023 he had his conviction overturned. The court ruled the expert evidence was unreliable. But Plummer was never released. The appeal court’s ruling was immediately challenged by the CPS. Plummer was convicted again in a retrial in June 2023.
This time the prosecution relied on an alleged confession made by Plummer to a by then dead cellmate, Christopher Dunne. Dunne, who had schizophrenia, was a police informant and not been cross-examined at the original trial. Plummer’s team said the hearsay evidence was unreliable.
On Wednesday, in less than 10 minutes, the Court of Appeal quashed the 2023 conviction. The three judges ruled: “We consider that this conviction is unsafe because the Dunne hearsay evidence should have been withdrawn from the jury even if it was properly admitted in the first place. Mr Plummer’s evidence does not support the “confession” evidence and gives rise to further serious concerns.”
Plummer’s solicitor, Annalisa Moscardini, said: “Justin Plummer is finally vindicated for his 28-year fight against this murder conviction. Due to his refusal to accept his guilt for a crime he has always been clear he did not commit, he has served far longer than his minimum term of 16 years. He even slept on a cell floor to protest. Justin’s determination and resilience has finally paid dividends, and he will sleep tonight a free man, for the first time in 28 years.”
The entire story can be read at:
justin-plummer-wrongly-convicted-twice-finally-freed-after-28-years
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. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html 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.
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
———————————————————————————————
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!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
-------------------------------------------------------------------
