Re: elephant burials

On Thu, 28 Mar 2024 13:02:41 +0000, Martin Harran
<martinharran@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, 23 Mar 2024 13:46:25 +0000, Martin Harran
<martinharran@gmail.com> wrote:
>
[...]
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I think we are maybe drifting back towards a discussion we had some
time ago about the nature of evidence   - not that I have any problem
with that!

>
>
I'd like to go back to something from that discussion, but I'll do it
here rather than add length to the 'burial' part of the discussion - I
will refer back to this post in its own place. I also think this is
relevant to other threads here.
>
In the previous discussion, I referred to my own understanding of
evidence being heavily influenced by the insights I gained from the
trial of the murderer of my sister-in-law, Attracta Harron.
>
Attracta went missing on the morning of 12 Dec 2003 whilst walking
home from Lifford to Strabane from weekday Mass. On 28th March, 2004,
21-year-old Trevor Hamilton was charged with Attracta's murder and
trial began on 27th February, 2006. The main evidence [1] against him
was:
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Traces of Attracta's blood were found in Hamilton's car which was
burnt out at his home on the afternoon of the day she disappeared.
Hamilton claimed he didn't set fire to the car, that it must have been
an intruder but in something of a Sherlock Holme's moment, it turned
out that the family dogs in a pen alongside the car never barked! He
also initially claimed he had not left the house that day but cell
tower records of his mobile phone showed that he had been out and
about in the Strabane that day and a neighbour also came forward to
say she had seen him driving the car.
>
A farmer from the area reported that around the time that Attracta
disappeared, he had to give way in his tractor to a speeding red car
(Hamilton's car was red) with a woman in the passenger seat with what
looked like streaks of blood on her face. He could not identify the
driver but when he saw Attracta's photo in the newspapers the next
day, he was absolutely sure that she was the woman in the car.
>
The police recovered ashes from several fires in Hamilton's back
garden and among partially burnt items they found an ATM receipt for a
cash withdrawal she had made; rosary beads and a page from a religious
pamphlet, both limited circulation and matching ones carried by
Attracta; a business card matching one given to her by an architect
involved in the new library in Strabane where she worked; a plaster
which matched an open box of plasters in her home (her husband
explained that she used the plasters on her heels as he shows were
loose fitting).
>
Attracta's body was found buried in a shallow grave less than 200
yards from Hamilton's home. She had been buried in a large, branded
feed bag matching ones at Hamilton's home (his father drove for a
local feed company whose brand was on the bag) and was covered with
concrete slabs which matched unused ones lying around Hamilton's
house. The pathologist determined that Attracta had died from a severe
blow to her head, likely from an axe-like implement but her body was
too badly decomposed to decide whether or not she had been sexually
assaulted.
>
Hamilton had been released from prison just four months earlier he had
been released from prison on licence after serving half of a
seven-year sentence for rape and other offences, including threats to
kill; the risk he posed to the public, especially adult women, was
assessed as high (level 3). [2] The prosecution were allowed to
introduce this previous case due to similarities between the two
crimes [3]. For example, the car used by Hamiton in the rape for which
he had been convicted had the handle and window winder removed from
the passenger door; they were also missing on the car burnt-out at his
home.
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===========================================
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None of the above evidence directly tied Hamiton to Attracta's death
but the prosecution pointed out that Hamilton murdering her was the
only explanation for the evidence in its totality. Charging the jury
at the end of the six-week trial, the judge addressed the same issue.
He explained to the jury that the various elements of evidence are
like strands of a rope; individual strands might be very weak but
entwined together, they could make a very strong rope. Even if one or
two of them got broken, the rope could still be strong. He told the
jury that they should not get caught up too much in the value of
individual pieces of evidence, they should look at the overall picture
presented by the evidence in total.
>
Hamilton was found unanimously found guilty, a verdict with which the
judge said he totally agreed. Stating that "What you did to Mrs
Harron, a good and loving woman, was at once nauseating and
horrifying, it was the stuff of nightmares and the epitome of the loss
of innocence in our community … What that poor woman experienced as
you prepared to execute her, whatever weapon you used to accomplish
it, was so appalling that it demands retribution of the most severe
kind.", he sentenced Hamilton to the first 'whole life' sentence ever
imposed in Northern Ireland [4]
>
I think that *totality* of evidence is what gets ignored by posters
like Ron Dean who try to pick holes in isolated pieces of evidence
whilst handwaving away the *overall weight* of evidence from various
sources.
>
Each piece of evidence in Attracta's trial above can be argued against
on its own.  The traces of blood were evidence that Attracta's body
had been in his car but there was no direct evidence to show that he
put it there. He could have claimed (but did not do so) that the items
from the fire were because he had found her handbag tossed into a
ditch and decided to get rid of it in case it would be associated with
him. The farmer could not identify the driver of the car and only
identified Attracta from a newspaper photo. The property around his
house was not particularly secured and anyone could have got access to
the feed bag and slabs, and so on. 
>
In the same way, Dean and others try to build their case, for example,
on parts of the fossil record that are incomplete whilst ignoring the
overwhelming fossil evidence that conclusively shows an overall
pattern of nesting, descent and inheritance.
 
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[1] More details: https://attracta.martinharran.com/openstate.htm
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[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Hamilton
>
[3] We previously discussed this briefly. The introduction of previous
conviction was the first case allowed under The Criminal Justice
(Evidence) (Northern Ireland) Order 2004 which was the NI
implementation of the  UK Criminal Justice Act 2003.
>
[4] The Appeals Court later changed this to a 35-year tariff. For the
benefit, of those unfamiliar with the UK legal system, that does not
mean he gets out after 35 years, it means he cannot even be
*considered* for parole for at least 35 years.

A few legal aspects that probably won't be of interest to others but
might be of interest to Burkhard.

When we discussed this last year, we had a brief discussion about
evidence of previous behaviour but you took yourself off to Corfus and
we never got back to it. [1] I'll respond here as it might contribute
to any ongoing discussion about the nature and/or admissibility of
evidence.

You quibbled slightly with my statement that Hamilton's trial was the
first case in the UK where a previous conviction was revealed to the
jury due to the similarity between the two crimes. It was actually the
first case allowed under The Criminal Justice (Evidence) (Northern
Ireland) Order 2004 which was the NI implementation of the  UK
Criminal Justice Act 2003. Introduction of such evidence relating to a
previous offence had been considered the previous year in the trial of
Robert Howard for the murder of 15-year-old schoolgirl Arlene Arkinson
who went missing in 1994 and has never been found. Howard was already
serving a sentence for the murder of 14-year-old English schoolgirl
Hannah Williams [2]. That conviction was never disclosed to the jury
who went on to acquit him. I'm not sure whether the prosecution
decided not to proceed with the evidence or whether the judge ruled it
out. Howard later admitted before dying in jail that he had murdered
Arlene. I've read somewhere but haven't a link that one of the jurors
said afterwards that if they had heard that evidence, they would have
convicted him. In what seemed to me a somewhat unusual conclusion, the
coroner in Arlene's inquest in 2021 found that Howard was responsible
for her death. [3]

The prosecution barrister explained to us that the new legislation
allowed them to introduce a previous conviction where the similarity
between the two crimes demonstrated a high probability that the same
person committed both. Key aspects were that the first case involved
Hamilton giving a lift to an older woman, a stranger, taking her back
to the caravan at his home where the rape took place and his car
having the handle and window winder removed from the passenger door.
Those three elements were common to the Attracta case.

This was argued out in the absence of the jury at the very start of
the trial and the judge said he would reserve his decision which he
finally made in the closing days of the trial, allowing the previous
conviction to be presented to the jury. Hamilton had other previous
convictions - he had been found guilty of exposing himself and
masturbating before women drivers who were passing along country
roads- but no attempt was made to introduce that though the judge did
refer to it in his statement when passing sentence. [4]

In the previous discussion, you mentioned your concerns about the
defence not being allowed, procedurally, to bring up the safety of the
old conviction. That came up in Hamilton's case.  In allowing the
previous rape to be introduced as evidence,  Justice McLaughlin also
acceded to the prosecution's request that the previous victim not be
asked to appear in person but that her previous statement be read into
evidence by a member of the PSNI; they said that she was still
suffering emotional trauma from the rape and that was already
intensified by Hamiton now being on trial for murder.[5] The defence
tried to fight this, Hamilton claiming that he was not in fact guilty
of the previous rape, he had only pleaded guilty on the advice of his
solicitor to get a reduced sentence and he wanted to challenge the
previous victim's account. The judge rejected that argument. I can't
remember his exact words but he said something along the lines that
Hamilton's guilty plea made the previous crime an established fact in
legal terms, it was not open to challenge in this case and he was not
going to put "that poor woman" through the additional trauma of facing
Hamilton in court again.

Whilst I wanted to see the strongest case possible presented, like
you, I did have reservations about someone being tried on the basis of
previous behaviour. In this case, however, I think it was justified,
it wasn't used as evidence of Hamilton murdering  Attracta, it was
evidence of his *capability* to do so. Photos of Hamilton in the media
after the trial show him as quite an evil-looking person but that is
typical of the media - he was far from that in real-life. He was a
pleasant-looking young man, almost cherubic in appearance, and if I
had been on the jury, I would have found it hard to believe that such
an innocent-looking young lad was capable of such evil behaviour.
Watching the jury, I could almost see the wheels turning in their
heads as they realised yes, this young man was capable of evil
behaviour. It also brought into focus *why* he would have committed
such evil; the sexual element had been mentioned in the case but more
or less danced around as Attracta's body was too badly decomposed to
determine if sexual assault or rape had taken place.



[1]
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/qR3fuyqIAAs/m/nCoNb6X1AQAJ

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Hannah_Williams

[3]
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/arlene-arkinson-was-killed-by-convicted-child-murderer-inquest-finds-1.4626514

[4] https://attracta.martinharran.com/sentence.pdf

[5] The prosecution also told us that the prosecution in the rape
trial had considered charging Hamilton with attempted murder as he had
threatened to kill his victim and had left his finger marks on her
throat, only stopping when she swore on her young son's life that she
wouldn't tell anyone what happened. They went for rape only as the two
charges carried the same sentence and they were totally confident of
winning that but less confident about winning an attempted murder
charge.