CLPEX Chat Board

Those responsible for the mistakes in the erroneous identifications surrounding the Marion Ross murder have never admitted mistakes, much less apologized to those they wronged.

I'm sorry Hank, but the Danes did admit their mistakes. Unfortunately after Asbury was freed.
See Sunday Times, first Sunday March 2006.

You forget that the Dane's only mistake was believing the ident claimed by SCRO was the first print they were shown for that piece of currency. The SCRO indicated the wrong print. So what the Danes agreed to -- the "mistake" they made -- was in not identifying David Asbury's fingerprint on a piece of currency in David Asbury's possession. That was the "admission" they were "wrong," when they agreed that the SCRO was correct in identifying David Asbury's fingerprint on money in his possession. I might note that the Post Office clerk who gave Asbury the money was also identified on the currency, proving that Asbury got the cash from the Post Office, as he said, NOT from Marion Ross' house.

I agree with Hank about the thickness of your bonehead.

I might note that the Post Office clerk who gave Asbury the money was also identified on the currency, proving that Asbury got the cash from the Post Office, as he said, NOT from Marion Ross' house.

No it doesn't!
If what you say is true, then it only proves that at some point in its life a certain note was handled by a particular individual.

Oh dear, oh dear.

I have posted before on the Danes stuff. See what I said to Daktari on May 22nd; September 17th; and October 9th. To save you the trouble of looking back, here is what I said in May. It begins with a Daktari quote:

Asbury, you will remember, appealed his conviction on the basis of 'dodgy' fingerprint evidence in the Shirley Cardwell aka McKie trial.
Two Danish experts original said that there had been a misidentification but later recanted, after Asbury had been freed.

Please, Daktari. Read the postings before, and stick to the facts. The appeal was on the grounds that the print on the tin, alleged to be Ross's print, was wrong. The Danes were instructed by the prosecution and agreed that it was wrong. They have never retracted that view. They DID retract the opinion about a print on money, after it was disclosed that SCRO had given them the wrong information. So please don't pedal the lie that you just have. Again. I know that the SCRO have no desire for the detail, but this one is a bit important. If you would like, I am sure someone can draw you a picture that will help, as it seems that reading is a bit beyond you. Or, of course, can you produce the evidence that the Danes withdrew their agreement that the print on the tin was not marion ross's? Did not think so....

I guess that everyone has the measure of Daktari.

And, incidentally, the prints from the post office clerk found on the money showed it came from Asbury's bank. Ross did not bank there. Sorry Daktari, but liar liar your bum's on fire.

DD.

Isn't it funny that the Jury, having sat through all the evidence, did not believe Asbury? Do you not find it odd that the only grounds for appeal were the fingerprints? Are you really saying that if Shirley Cardwell, nee McKie, would have been found guilty Asbury would have still appealed on these grounds?
Dick you have to live with yourself.
I'm glad I don't!
Roll on the Inquiry.

Asbury did not give evidence as far as I know. Do you know different?

There was nothing to believe of disbelieve of his, and his not giving evidence was on legal advice.

If Shirley was convicted, it would have been because no one discovered the lies being told by SCRO. So, yes, if Shirley had been found guilty, Asbury would not have had the determination to have the matter looked at again. But equally if my sister had been a boy, she would be my brother. I am not sure what point you are trying to make. Lies about Y7; lies found out about the other print. Therefore two acquittals.

I am glad too that you don't have to live with me, although I am sure that if we had a debate about this face to face, we could perhaps sort a lot out. What about it? Do you fancy a meeting to discuss this case? We could arrange to have our true identities disclosed to an independent third party and have a coffee and a chat?

DD

Asbury did not give evidence as far as I know. Do you know different?

There was nothing to believe of disbelieve of his, and his not giving evidence was on legal advice.

He did plead Not Guilty though and that was not believed

If Shirley was convicted, it would have been because no one discovered the lies being told by SCRO.

What lies?

So, yes, if Shirley had been found guilty, Asbury would not have had the determination to have the matter looked at again.

So all the stuff about Post Office savings was rubbish then?

Lies about Y7;

What lies?

lies found out about the other print.

What lies?

Therefore two acquittals.

No one acquittal and an uncontested Appeal

I am glad too that you don't have to live with me, although I am sure that if we had a debate about this face to face, we could perhaps sort a lot out. What about it? Do you fancy a meeting to discuss this case? We could arrange to have our true identities disclosed to an independent third party and have a coffee and a chat?

I hope that’s not the infamous McKie Coffee Pot you would be be pouring from. You know, the one Allan Bayle so admired.

Remember that Shirley went to Asbury’s solicitor and told her a fellow cop had planted her print in No 43 after Peter Swann had confirmed the SCRO ident. Asbury’s own expert Malcolm Graham also confirmed this. At that point the McKies had accepted in was her mark. That was why Pat Wertheim got involved, because of his expertise in false planted and fabricated marks.

And talking of lies.
Contrary to what she has repeated many times Shirley Mckie did not come across Pat Werthiem’s name by chance, Angela McCracken did the search for him.

I have (at last) produced a reasonably brief synopsis of my statistical observation about the McKie identification. It is the text with the yellow background here:

http://www.stevehornsc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pf.htm

Area of opportunity is a statistical concept that fingerprinting does not normally think about. When there is no evidence that an act of wrongdoing has occurred, a trier of fact could easily come to the wrong conclusion by not understanding the concept. For example it would be very easy for someone to think:

(a) it is not unlikely for a police officer to enter a crime scene without permission and lie about it, and
(b) misidentifications are very rare.

(a) and (b) could have different areas of opportunity in the thinker’s mind. Thought (a) might be embracing a large area – “it is not unlikely that a police officer might enter a crime scene - somewhere”. Thought (b) might be only be embracing the immediate situation in front of them – “the chances of a misidentification involving the people in front of me are small”.

The correct way to think about this situation is:

(a) it is not unlikely for a police officer somewhere in the world to enter a crime scene without permission and lie about it and
(b) it is not unlikely for a misidentification to occur somewhere in the world

so when a denied identification is encountered, it is the balance of these two similar probabilities that the officer is lying. Another correct line of thinking would be:

(a) given that there is no physical evidence that an unauthorised police officer entered this crime scene, it is very unlikely to have happened here, and
(b) the chances of a misidentification in any one case are small

so again it is the balance of two similar probabilities.

A statistician would say the prior probability of a police officer entering the crime scene and lying about it when there is no evidence to support the proposition is very low. This is transformed into a medium posterior probability after a fingerprint ID which has a very low probability of error.

It would be very wrong to think:

(a) even though there is no physical evidence that a police officer entered the crime scene we have a fingerprint ID so that makes it not unlikely. And compare that with
(b) misidentification is very unlikely

(a) on its own is OK but not if it is being compared with (b). “Not unlikely” is not enough on its own to accuse someone of lying.

Nobody needs to think about areas of opportunity when the case starts from a physical act of wrongdoing because everything relates to the local case.

(a) we know the criminal was in the crime scene so there is a fair chance that he or she deposited a fingerprint and
(b) the chances of a misidentification in any one case are small

That is not a balance of similar probabilities.

In statistical speak, a medium prior probability that the criminal left a fingerprint while in the crime scene is transformed into a very high posterior probability after a fingerprint ID which has a very low probability of error.

Dear Daktari,

I am truly sorry that you are not prepared to meet me to discuss this case, as we seem to be going over old ground again and again.

We seem to be agreed about a lot. We are agreed that Asbury did not actually give evidence. I am an old fashioned sort of chap, and I believe that until you are convicted, you are innocent. A jury convicted Asbury, of course that happened. But as I pointed out before - at least once before - the defence had obtained a report from Malcolm "I am sorry I made a terrible mistake....Oh wait I did not make a mistake" Graham. It said that the print on the tin was that of the deceased.

It was therefore rather difficult for defence counsel, knowing this "fact" to make much of a defence. Indeed, it would have been improper for him to suggest to the SCRO that they were wrong. Ethics, ethics. Damn those ethics.

It was not believed that he was not guilty. Yes, you are right. But there is a further important and inextricably linked part to this story. Yes, the acquittal by the appeal court when the correct facts were known.

No matter how much you try to get away from it, he was acquitted because (and only because) the case collapsed when the Danes said SCRO were wrong (and thus that Malcolm made a mistake too). Unpallatable as it is to the SCRO, it is what happened. You can adopt a position of suggesting incorrect motives of those who don't fall in to your determined position if you like, but I for one don't buy it. You say that the Lord Advocate was covering up; you say that Pat is a charleton; that Arie is etc etc. But all you do is say that those who disagree have all, independently, an axe to grind or were totally misinformed. I have yet to hear what it is that you criticise the Danes for, now you seem to have accepted that they also stated that the print on the tin ought not to be identified as Ross's print.

I have always maintained that SCRO lied. That they knew, by some reasonably early stage, that the doorframe print and the tin print were not authored as they said. These are the lies that I refer to. I know that you will never accept that they were misidentifications, but I think you are well aware of the reason that I described them as lies.

I am not sure what you mean about the stuff about the Post Office savings being rubbish. i will try to explain. The Prosecution case was that Asbury must have stolen the money from Ross. It was folded in a way that only a banker would do it. Ross previously worked for a bank. She banked at the Bank of Scotland.

Asbury's story was that he withdrew the money from the Post Office. The Post Office clerk's prints were on the money. His bank statements showed that withdrew the cash. Why the Crown led the evidence about the money is not clear. But they did. The jury may, of course, have thought the money came from the Post Office, but he still had murdered Ross. Who knows. Certainly a print of the deceased on the tin is a bit good, isn't it?

I have no doubt that Shirley and Iain thought it was shirley's print at an early stage. They, like the rest of the world, thought fingerprints infallable and SCRO to be honest and reliable.

However, the involvement of Pat showed that that was wrong. And Pat, like it or not, has been supported by a number of very experienced examiners. I know that you don't accept their position, but it is apparently an honestly held, informed view. To that extent there must be at least a reasonable doubt that SCRO misidentified.

I do not know who did the search for an expert. Angela McCracken certainly claimed credit for it in the newspapers following the acquittal (a newspaper that her firm acts for no less). I was not there, but I do know that the solicitors and the police federation told the McKies that they would not pay for another report after the Swann report. I assume that you have seen documentary evidence (other than that great organ of truth, the Daily Record) which shows that McCracken did the search. If you have, let me see it and I will invite Ian McKie to correct an inaccuracy.

My offer of a coffee remains open. I am sorry that you have apparently rejected it. I cannot help but wonder why it is that you are not prepared to have an adult discussion about this.

DD.

The tragic Sally Clark case involved the rareness of an event being wrongly interpreted as proof that a crime has occurred. I think that the same thing happened to Shirley McKie. Paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow giving evidence during Sally Clark’s trial, claimed the probability of two natural unexplained cot deaths in a family (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) was 73 million-to-one.

The Royal Statistical Society says about this:

Aside from its invalidity, figures such as the 1 in 73 million are very easily misinterpreted. Some press reports at the time stated that this was the chance that the deaths of Sally Clark's two children were accidental. This (mis-)interpretation is a serious error of logic known as the Prosecutor's Fallacy. The jury needs to weigh up two competing explanations for the babies' deaths: SIDS or murder. Two deaths by SIDS or two murders are each quite unlikely, but one has apparently happened in this case. What matters is the relative likelihood of the deaths under each explanation, not just how unlikely they are under one explanation.

I have seen fingerprint errors described as being “very rare” or “very unlikely”, or that the rate is “infinitesimal”. Although these are not numerical, they are frequency estimates so they are only one side of the equation. Before we make any accusations we need to know the likelihood of the alternative explanation. In the McKie case this is that she entered a well-secured crime scene without being seen, left no trace except a fingerprint, and is lying about it despite being confronted with a verified fingerprint identification.

When estimating the likelihood of this explanation we cannot take the fingerprint evidence into account. As far as I know there IS no other evidence (of any substance) so this explanation is very unlikely. No evidence means that there is no more and no less reason to believe that an unauthorised entry was made to Marion Ross’s house than any other crime scene, and McKie is no more and no less likely to have disobeyed orders than any other police officer. Do police officers do this sort of thing (including telling very risky lies about it)? Is it even possible to assess the frequency of something which leaves no trace? A balance of similar probabilities is not enough, we must be sure that these acts are very much more frequent than the misidentification estimates for it to be safe to assume the officer is lying, and to charge with perjury.

Contrast this with fingerprinting when used in the normal way to solve crimes. We KNOW that the alternative explanation happens frequently, very frequently – this is all the latent prints deposited by criminals while committing the crimes that are all too obvious.

(Of course, if the real rate of double SIDS is less than the 1 in 73 million or if the SCRO methods in 1997 made misidentification more than just “very unlikely”, then the likelihood of the accused being innocent becomes even higher.)

The RSS statement continues (with regard to the Prosecutor’s Fallacy):

The Court of Appeal has recognised these dangers (R v. Deen 1993, R v. Doheny/Adams 1996) in connection with probabilities used for DNA profile evidence, and has put in place clear guidelines for the presentation of such evidence. The dangers extend more widely, and there is a real possibility that without proper guidance, and well-informed presentation, frequency estimates presented in court could be misinterpreted by the jury in ways that are very prejudicial to defendants.

I would go further and say that nobody should be prosecuted or even assumed to be lying on the basis of a single frequency estimate (such as the assumption that fingerprint misidentifications are “very rare”). There must be good reason to believe that the other explanation is much more likely. This is a general point but surely at the very least we should know that a crime or act of wrongdoing has actually happened before someone is subjected to the ordeal of a trial or the humiliation of being assumed to be dishonest.

I think that Shirley McKie’s colleagues in the Srathclyde police made a “serious error of logic” when they assumed that her fingerprint identification from latent mark Y7 carries the same confidence as a fingerprint which makes an incriminating connection in a crime investigation. I think that Colin Boyd (Solicitor General) made the same error when he decided to prosecute McKie for perjury. A similar error of logic could happen again today if the principle is not understood.

RSS statement:
http://www.rss.org.uk/PDF/RSS%20Stateme ... 202001.pdf

Sally Clark case:
http://www.sallyclark.org.uk

Hi Steve

If 73,000,000 to 1 is an accurate probability against a mother's two children dying of SIDS, then it must happen every year somewhere in the world. Likewise, if erroneous fingerprint identifications happen at roughly the same frequency (who knows), they must happen somewhere in the world every year also. If enough people buy a lottery ticket, somebody will win.

The odds of any one mother's two babies both dying of SIDS, the odds of any one person being wrongly identified on the basis of a single fingerprint, or the odds of me winning the lottery, are all stacked astronomically against the one occurance. But they all have to happen somewhere, sometime.

Pity the poor mother, the innocent accused, and the lottery winner.

The probability of so many experts making the same two 'mistakes' in the same case, given their experience and previous reliability, is mind boggling.
Realistically there are only two explanations of what really occurred in the McKie / Cardwell case either there was a massive, if inept, conspiracy between groups of people and independent persons, who did not each other, or it is her print.

More interesting however is why McKie / Cardwell’s prints were sent for elimination when she had been ordered not to enter the house?
A serving officer’s mark being found in a crime scene where they had legitimately been would not be too unusual and certainly would not, in the first instance, have caused such a hullabaloo.

Why was Shirley so upset, fling into tantrums, etc?
Does anyone think that her previous form had anything to do with that?
After all, had it been anyone else it would just have resulted in a ticking off, if that.

Daktari,

You are going to have to help me out here. And give me some insight as to you have any idea what you are talking about.

“The probability of so many experts making the same two 'mistakes' in the same case, given their experience and previous reliability, is mind boggling.”

Are you referring to Pat Wertheim, Arie Zeelenberg, Torger Rudrud, The National Fingerprint Training Centre at Durham and the two Danish Experts? The reason I mention them is they have all looked at the ORIGINAL Material.

So can you clarify if these are the group of “so many experts” to which you refer? If not, can you explain why your statement would not apply to those experts??

And can you explain how you can simply ignore the other “so many experts” who disagree with you and your colleagues?

The way I see it your statement could easily be made about Wertheim, Zeelenberg, the NTC, and the Danish Experts, and rewritten as follows..

“The probability of Pat Wertheim, Arie Zeelenberg, Geoff Shepherd, Mike Thompson, Kristian Rokkjaer, and Frank Rasmussen making a mistake, looking at original material, given their experience and previous reliability, is mind boggling.”

Which leads us to your next statement:

“Realistically there are only two explanations of what really occurred in the McKie / Cardwell case either there was a massive, if inept, conspiracy between groups of people and independent persons, who did not each other, or it is her print.”

I know we have been here before, but are there just two explanations? Okay I’ll run with your logic however let me bring that first part into context and go with that for a second if I may

"Realistically there are only two explanations of what really occurred in the McKie / Cardwell case either there was a massive, if inept, conspiracy between international groups of people and independent persons, who did not know each other, or it is NOT her print."

So who are these “so called experts” you refer to, and why do you ignore a second set of experts who match the exact same criteria? Just curious.

Daktari wrote:The probability of so many experts making the same two 'mistakes' in the same case, given their experience and previous reliability, is mind boggling.

.
My picture of independent (out-of-department) verification is that it has a poor track record. It failed in both the Mayfield and Cowans cases, and in the McKie case “Identification” and “Exclusion” each has its own independent verifiers.

If there was a good number of instances of miscarriage of justice being prevented by verifiers openly stating different conclusions from the original, then it would be inevitable that one or two misIDs will get past the verifiers and that would account for the cases we know about. But I don’t think that is happening. The only examiners I know who have stated a contrary opinion in court are Pat Wertheim and David Grieve.

It's like putting your trust in a fire alarm - then it fails to go off the one time it is needed.