"FLAWED FORENSICS PROVIDES FIRST A METICULOUS ACCOUNTING OF THE ALLEGED EVIDENCE AGAINST SPLATT AND THEN A METICULOUS ACCOUNTING OF ITS MISINTERPRETATION AND DISTORTION BY A RAFT OF POLICE AND PROSECUTION EXPERTS AND OFFICIAL INQUIRIES. THE CASE HAS A VERY SPECIAL AND UNIQUE CHARACTERISTIC. ALL OF THE EVIDENCE IS MICROSCOPIC AND ALL OF IT IS CIRCUMSTANTIAL, PURPORTEDLY RESPONDING TO THE DOUBLE SIDED ‘LOCARD’ PRINCIPLE THAT THE KILLER WILL HAVE LEFT SOMETHING BELONGING TO HIM AT THE CRIME SCENE AND WILL ALSO HAVE TAKEN AWAY FROM IT SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T BELONG TO HIM. THE ISSUE HERE WAS THAT ENTIRE BODY OF EVIDENCE AGAINST SPLATT WAS EVIDENCE RESPONDING TO THE LOCARD PRINCIPLE. THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE. CONSEQUENTLY IT WAS LADLED INTO THE PROSECUTION SOUP THICKLY – SO THICKLY THAT BY THE END OF THE TRIAL THE COUNT AS TO ITEMS OF FORENSIC INTEREST TO HAVE MADE THEIR WAY FROM THE ACCUSED’S CLOTHING TO THE MURDER SCENE, MOSTLY ONTO THE BEDSHEET ON WHICH THE VICTIM DIED, AMOUNTED TO A STAGGERING TWO THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED. THESE 2600 MOSTLY MICROSCOPIC PIECES OF EVIDENCE WERE ONLY SOME OF A MUCH LARGER NUMBER WHICH HAD ALLEGEDLY DROPPED OUT OF SPLATT’S WORKCLOTHES INTO HIS CAR, OR ONTO A CAR COAT AND THE TURNUPS OF A PAIR OF TROUSERS HANGING IN HIS WARDROBE, BEFORE EXITING CAR COAT AND TROUSERS ON TO THE VICTIM’S BEDSHEET OVER A PERIOD OF PERHAPS AN HOUR OR SO. HOW MANY REMAINED ON THE CARCOAT OR TROUSER TURNUPS, GARMENTS HE SWORE HE HADN’T WORN FOR YEARS, SHOULD HAVE BEEN SEVERAL TIMES THE 2600 BUT TYPICALLY, IT SEEMS, NO ONE COUNTED THEM. ON THIS EVIDENCE, AND NOTHING ELSE, SPLATT HAD BEEN CONVICTED OF MURDER."
KEITH HUNTER; (Networked knowledge informs us that, "Keith Hunter is an award-winning television current affairs journalist, documentary maker and director of drama, now known for his documentary investigations into miscarriages of justice. A graduate in music and languages, Hunter joined the NZBC in 1966 as a researcher on the Town and Around magazine programme. He later moved on to a role as reporter / director on both Auckland and Wellington-based arts and current affairs documentary series, winning his first "Best Programme" award in 1972 for You Can't Always Get What You Want, an investigative documentary on rackets in the car market. Hunter directed the drama series Mortimer's Patch, for the first two series of which he also produced and co-wrote the incidental music, and Shark in the Park, and also the comedy series Letters to Blanchy. Since 1986, Hunter has worked as a freelance producer and director, and has won awards as producer, director and writer for both drama and documentaries focusing on legal issues. These include The Remand of Ivan Curry, about a deaf man imprisoned on remand for two years for an alleged murder which in fact was an accidental death caused by someone else; Out of the Dark, on the police hunt for the 'South Auckland Rapist' Joseph Thompson; Staunch, a one-off drama based on a true story about a young girl harassed by the police; and Murder on the Blade?, about the Scott Watson case. The Murder on the Blade documentary, which won the 2005 TV Award for Best Documentary, led Hunter to write his first book - Trial by Trickery, also about the Watson case. In October 2009 Scott Watson presented the book and film to the Governor General as the documentation of the grounds for his petition for a pardon. In 1997 Hunter was the founding president of the Screen Directors' Guild of New Zealand, a post he held for four years."
PHOTO: TED SPLATT; LEFT; JOURNALIST STEWART COCKBURN; RIGHT;
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BACKGROUND: While preparing a recent post on Dr. Ross James' court challenge to the Medical Board of South Australia's finding of professional misconduct in connection with his evidence in the Henry Keogh case, I was intrigued by the reference to a Royal Commission called into the conviction of a man named Edward Charles Splatt and decided to learn more about him. For a start, I learned that Mr. Splatt was set free after the Shannon Royal Commission heard additional scientific evidence which cast doubt on the validity of the Supreme Court verdict against Splatt - and Justice Carl Shannon ruled that, "it would be unjust and dangerous for the verdict of guilty to stand." But it was clear to me that Mr. Splatt was only exonerated because of the intervention of a phenomenal investigative reporter named Stewart Cockburn who burrowed into the case and drew public attention to it - and because of dedicated lawyers who had the ability to tackle the scientific evidence in the case - virtually the only evidence to incriminate him. We learn from the Networked Knowledge Web-Site, that Rosa Amelia Simper died on 3 December 1977. Don Spurling, her son in law who lived next door found her on her bed, strangled with her bra, mutilated about the vagina and rectum, with a chisel like instrument, her nose broken, clothing torn, house ransacked. A few possessions and about $200 were taken. The clock in the bedroom had stopped at 2.48am after the plug was removed. A pathologist said she had died between 3am and 4am, allowing for 2 hours either way. An iron had been turned on and left on the bed beside the body for the apparent purpose of starting a fire. But the heat was on too low and it only resulted in scorching. The government offered a reward. Traces of paint and metal were found on the windowsill, where the window had been jemmied open by an intruder. The traces were also found on the bed sheet. Attention was focused on the Wilson factory only 40 metres away. Of the 8 or 9 men who worked there, Ted Splatt was determined to be the prime suspect. He was arrested 3 March 1978, and found guilty 24 November. Justice Roma Mitchell sentenced him to life. His appeal was dismissed on 28 February 1979. The High Court refused him leave to appeal on 12 September 1979. Stuart Cockburn took up his case and a movement started. A Royal Commission was set up, and Judge Carl Shannon QC on 1 August 1984 recommended he be pardoned. In the soul searching that followed, it was decided that a reform of the South Australian forensic science system was necessary, and in fact it was carried out. Today the Forensic Science Centre in South Australia is independent of the police force. For administrative purposes only, it is under the Department of Services and Supply. It has all disciplines housed under one roof and has a highly qualified director. The investigation of the case has become a model and an inspiration for those confronted by apparently unshakable court decisions. Splatt was not well educated and was a spray painter at Wilson’s. He had some petty convictions. He had not been in trouble during the previous 8 years. It is said he had a bit of a temper. There was no evidence that he knew Mrs Simper. Some youths playing around nearby said they saw someone near her gate, but could not identify Splatt. Sergeant Frank Barry Cocks was a policeman specialising in forensic science, and describing himself as a technician concluded that the traces must have been left by the murdereR. With trace elements smaller on the window sill than on the bed, Cocks theorised that those on the bed must have fallen out of the turn-ups of the trousers of the murderer. There were paint flecks, birdseed, hairs and metal traces. It is said the search narrowed too quickly. It should have looked at other factories, and the preponderance of the elements in the environment. Splatt’s clothing was found to include trace elements at the scene including those not at the factory. Splatt said that he had been out at an office party that night. At 2am he had gone to his mother in law’s room to get some tablets. His wife said that he was with her all night. Mrs Condon swore an affidavit, but died some 2 weeks before the trial. Bette Rogers, the JP who was present at the signing of the affidavit said that Mrs Condon seemed reluctant to sign it, and unwilling to touch the bible when she swore on it. There was no primary evidence to implicate Splatt. Cocks found 3 fibres from the bed sheet, which were like those on Splatt’s trousers. Anna Parabyk was a forensic chemist involved with the case. There was some confusion over whether she had been sent grey fibres which were in the trousers too. The trousers were also found to contain paint, metal and birdseed traces similar to those found at the scene. A shirt of his also had fibres similar to those found at the scene. His car coat had similar foam particles to those found at the scene. Rex Kuchel, a botanical expert, identified wood from the windowsill as being jarrah, like a particle found on Splatt’s car coat. Both fragments looked as thought they had been painted. Dr Colin Jenner, from the Waite Institute said that the seed particles had not been heated or cooked, so they were unlikely to have come from a biscuit. Splatt had a birdcage at his home with similar seeds being used. Splatt had said he had not worn the trousers since 1975, and had put on 14 kilos so they no longer fitted him. The case focused on the theory of proportionate transfer – paint to metal (75/25) on the trousers matched the proportions at the scene. The Locard principle of transfer backed this up. The proportions on other employees were more the other way around. Cocks had a dominant role in the case. Splatt was convicted, and the Court of Criminal Appeal said that there were too many coincidences. Cockburn said he found the scientific evidence almost impossible to follow, and some jurors had told him the same thing. Trevor Griffin as the Attorney-General ordered 2 reviews of the case by Bishop and Bollen. Moran eventually recommended a Royal Commission. Mr R.L. Fish from the Home office was critical of the State’s forensic science system. Cocks had been at the crime scene, done the initial scientific evaluation, and instructed the scientists. Possibly some particles had been deposited at the crime scene by the investigators. It was said there were fibres on the bed sheet which could have matched every shirt in Splatt’s wardrobe. Parabyk could not judge the significance of her sample, because she did not know anything about the wider selection which was available. There were 30,000 suits similar to Splatt’s. With the hair found on Ms Simper’s breast, Dr Harry Harding did not receive it until 7 months after the investigation began. What objective measurements had been made to confirm the proportions referred to? Many of Cock’s assumptions had been converted to facts. The Shannon Commission began on 5 April 1983 – and said that when the evidence was examined in detail, it lost its superficial plausibility. The foam spicules were covered in 5 minutes at the trial, but covered 3 weeks of the Commission. Shannon concluded the evidence should not have been admitted.
The zinc particles on the window sill were found to be quite different to those of the alleged nail which was found. The fibres sent to Parabyk were found to be not representative of the trousers at all. There was doubt as to whether there had been any grey fibres at all – which were evident in the trousers. It seemed that the wood particles could have been jarrah – or some other hardwood. The oil in the wood which was thought to be evidence of paint turned out to be the sap in the wood. The ‘seeds’ too had probably been wrongly identified. The fragments could have come from a biscuit after all. It seemed that Kuchel had been told what to expect before he examined it. It seemed that the particles involved could have been airborne. One does not have to prove that, he said, it only has to be a possibility. Even the trace elements on the windowsills had not been compared to other windowsills at the house. Dr Robertson from Strathclyde said that the jury were seldom given appropriate context to enable them to weigh the evidence. Michael Abbott and Stewart Cockburn were told that another man had committed the crime. But the investigation was now 7 years old and really it was impossible to say. The case demonstrated how apparently solid scientific evidence can come undone.
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"Flawed Forensics details a police investigation process adherent to so many miscarriages of justice that it could be laid down in some international police tutor under the heading: “Murder Investigations, an Everyday Guide for Blind Policemen,” Keith Hunter's review for Networked Knowledge of "Flawed Forensics: The Splatt case and Stewart Cockburn", by Tom Mann, begins.
"The initial steps are:
0: Choose a suspect within days of beginning a murder investigation;
0: Ensure as many people as possible know the suspect is a suspect before the suspect does;
0: Immediately cease any further inquiries as to other suspects;
0: Make the ‘suspect’ status known to the suspect and the wider public by searching his house as openly as possible, certainly under the gaze of the neighbours and if possible under a glare of publicity.
0: If real evidence against the suspect is sparse find some weak circumstantial evidence and misinterpret it;
0: If the available circumstantial evidence seems insufficient create some more;
0: Don’t copper your bets on the circumstantial evidence. Gild them by ensuring your scientific experts are onside.
O: Thereafter give full rein to tunnel vision...," it continues.
"So it was in December 1977 when the curtain went up on the South Australian justice system’s seven year assault on Ted Splatt. Presumably because of his scientist background Tom Mann deals only in the facts, as they emerged over those seven years. He leaves inference and argument to the reader. Thus, when Splatt recalls seeing the inquiry chief casually pick out and pocket seed from his aviary during a police search of his house, Mann draws no inference about birdseed found later at the scene of the crime, linking suspect and scene. He simply observes the pocketing and later the linking.
Nor does he offer the obvious when defence counsel visit the murder scene eight months after the event, in the company of a police expert who ‘discovers’ previously unnoticed key evidence there. The scene has been repeatedly subject to scientific inspection focusing on evidence so minute as to be essentially invisible, but the new evidence is far from microscopic – an evidence-laden lolly which has lain unnoticed all that time alongside the bed on which the victim met her death. Nevertheless Mann maintains scientific silence as to the possibility it had arrived surreptitiously during the intervening months.
Flawed Forensics provides first a meticulous accounting of the alleged evidence against Splatt and then a meticulous accounting of its misinterpretation and distortion by a raft of police and prosecution experts and official inquiries. The case has a very special and unique characteristic. All of the evidence is microscopic and all of it is circumstantial, purportedly responding to the double sided ‘Locard’ principle that the killer will have left something belonging to him at the crime scene and will also have taken away from it something that doesn’t belong to him. The issue here was that entire body of evidence against Splatt was evidence responding to the Locard principle. There was nothing else. Consequently it was ladled into the prosecution soup thickly – so thickly that by the end of the trial the count as to items of forensic interest to have made their way from the accused’s clothing to the murder scene, mostly onto the bedsheet on which the victim died, amounted to a staggering two thousand six hundred. These 2600 mostly microscopic pieces of evidence were only some of a much larger number which had allegedly dropped out of Splatt’s workclothes into his car, or onto a car coat and the turnups of a pair of trousers hanging in his wardrobe, before exiting car coat and trousers on to the victim’s bedsheet over a period of perhaps an hour or so. How many remained on the carcoat or trouser turnups, garments he swore he hadn’t worn for years, should have been several times the 2600 but typically, it seems, no one counted them. On this evidence, and nothing else, Splatt had been convicted of murder.
Flawed Forensics goes beyond a dossier of scientific error and misjudgment. Alongside the forensic narrative are entries from a diary Splatt maintained throughout his seven innocent years in prison. Extracts from his notes chronicle life in a twentieth century Australian prison system that better belongs in the 16th century.
The diary entries are simply stated and of a journalistic quality unexpected of a prisoner without any background as a writer. They describe an inhumane system where guards can take delight in torturing their captives, while no-one outside knows about it and no-one inside cares. The diary notes record other sufferings too, including a serious physical attack on the outside by thugs on Splatt’s son because he was the son of a ‘murderer’.
Inevitably, the narrative turns to the difficulty the justice system has in accepting that it got it wrong and that the reason was that it had been lazy, unprofesssional and generally incompetent. Typical is the sympathetic excuse offered by one of the system’s scientific experts for a police technician’s misinterpretation of of the evidence as “…but another example of a witness trying to help the jury and then having to suffer the rebound..” which means is that you shouldn ‘t think poorly of a policeman who distorts the scientific evidence beyond the science in pursuit of guilty verdict.
At the end we find that Ted Splatt’s ordeal culminated in a plethora of inquiries. Amongst them was a truly objective commission of inquiry which finally found for Splatt. None of the forensics stood up to specific inspection. They were all exaggerated, twisted, made to have significance they lacked in truth. This led to a comedy of excuses as the system put up its defences against an unwelcome outcome and ordered the equivalent of an ‘independent’ assessment of an independent report on the independent review of an independent inquiry into the prosecution of a man against whom there was never a case from the beginning.
Most surprising it is that the story of Ted Splatt is not better known. If ever there was a criminal case to awake the legal-scientific community it was this one. Although described elsewhere as one of Australia’s two most significant miscarriages, this seems to be the first book to recount his ordeal and his dogged insistence he was innocent. It’s about time."
To purchase "Flawed Forensics: The Splatt case and Stewart Cockburn";
http://www.inkstonedigital.com/index.php?crn=223&rn=596&action=show_detailThe review can be found at:
http://netk.net.au/Splatt/Splatt24.aspTomorrow: Another review of "Flawed Forensics: The Splatt Case and Stewart Cockburn." By Harold Levy, Publisher of the Charles Smith Blog."
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
