In 1992 Paula Gilfoyle was found hanged
in a garage, and despite the fact that there was a suicide note in
her own handwriting her husband was found guilty of murdering her, in
effect because she was not the kind of person who would have killed
herself. Her husband repeatedly claimed his innocence and two appeals
against the conviction were dismissed . After 18 years in prison he
was released on parole. An important part of the case against him was
that the suicide note was completely out of character with Paula's
state of mind, so her husband must have forced her to write it. Many
people thought it all sounded very improbable at the time.
So what has now happened, at least
according to The Times. At the time of her death the police
took, as evidence, a locked box and the defence only learnt of its
existence and contents in 2010. The box contained Paula's diary –
which revealed an earlier suicide attempt which the court had not
been told about, and two suicide notes written by former boyfriends –
one of which was echoed in the note her husband was alleged to have
dictated. The case is currently being re-assessed in light of the
new evidence about Paula's mental state and it seems likely that the
verdict will be overturned. There is also likely to be an enquiry as
to why clearly vital evidence was withheld from the defence at the
time of the original trial and the subsequent appeals.
In part this case highlight a problem
with the adversarial legal system which is devoted to allocating
guilt – rather than finding out what actually happened and why, but
looking at the evidence in a neutral way. If your job is to find
someone guilty it is very easy, possibly even subconsciously, to
leave on one side leads which may weaken your case. If this means
leaving some documents in a box so that no-one knows of their
existence, your excuse is that it was merely an oversight and of
course you were not deliberately withholding evidence from the
defence.`
No comments:
Post a Comment