Bring back the death penalty

I am reminded of a case I was involved in many years ago in Brentford where a man, who was a mentally retarded farm labourer, raped and then murdered a young girl. He was arrested after telling a ‘friend’ what he had done and under questioning by Police, he freely admitted the whole thing in great detail.

He even volunteered to show us where he had hidden the knife with which he stabbed her several times and mutilated her body. This was in Brentford in a secluded wooded part of a park and miles away from where he lived (in Berkshire).

He was taken to the place where he hid the knife after the attack (I was one of the escorting Officers) and sure enough there it was hidden deep in hedgerow, completely invisible unless you knew it was there, and a short distance from where her dead body was found.

We recovered it and forensically matched the blade to the victim’s wounds, we matched the blood on the knife to her blood type, and we found his fingerprints all over the handle clear as clear could be. Game set & match you might think.

In Court he pleaded not guilty and his lawyers put forward the defence that, as he was mentally retarded, Police should have arranged for an ”appropriate adult” (i.e. mental health professional) to have been with him when he was questioned and admitted everything. As this was not done, they applied to the Court to have all and any ”confession” evidence excluded from the trial – which included all the details of his crime that were revealed in his confession. This included taking us to where he had concealed the knife and all the forensic evidence associated with it.

In effect we were left with no hard evidence that he committed this crime and the Jury took the view that his admission to a friend before his arrest was simply a boast. They were refused the opportunity to hear any other evidence and so had no other choice but to aquit him.