Innocence Project: court of last resort

originally by: The Observer
9th January 2011

It was, in the words of the judge presiding over the case, a “brutal and undignified death”. A 79-year-old woman, Joan Albert, had been stabbed in a sudden, savage and brutal attack, her body found in the hallway of her Suffolk home on 16 December 2001. The pensioner had, police believed, been murdered during a burglary that had gone wrong.

Following months of investigations and forensic tests, the man charged with the murder was a 25-year-old office worker named Simon Hall. Hall claimed he was innocent: on the night of the murder he had been out drinking seven miles from Albert’s home and he had no motive to kill the pensioner.

The main evidence against Hall was a statement given by the prosecution expert, who claimed that black nylon flock fibres and green polyester fibres found in addresses and vehicles related to Simon Hall were “indistinguishable” from those found at the crime scene and on Joan Albert’s body.

Despite the fact that all the other evidence pointed to Hall’s innocence, including hairs and fingerprints found at the crime scene which did not match and his strong alibi, Simon Hall was sentenced to life imprisonment in April 2003. “Why you chose, in the small hours,” Mrs Justice Rafferty told Hall, “to break into her home and stab her to death may never be known.” The judge assumed, of course, that he was guilty.

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Posted by Kushi Amlak-Sakhu on 11/01/2011. Filed under Human Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry