Did The CCRC Make The Right Decision For The Appeal of The Warner Case?

After reading the CCRC documentation of the Warner case we are able to make conclusions as to whether or not we believe the case was treated in the right way by the commission. A section 19 investigation of the case was approved by the CCRC;  all evidence was reassessed. 

During this reassessment, Forensic evidence suggested that the fibres, on the jumper that Mr Warner was wearing on the night in question and left at the Pools home, were indistinguishable from the fibres that were found on the bed sheets found at the house. More forensic evidence suggests that hairs on the bedding, that did not match those of Mrs Pool, had an incomplete DNA profile matching Mr Warner’s. The chances of the DNA being unrelated to Mr Warmer were said to be 1 in 680, overturning assertions that he never went upstairs. Though all items of forensic evidence had all been destroyed before this investigation.

The section 19 investigation found evidence to implicate another suspect of the murder of the pools, Mr Smith, after his fingerprints were found on the front porch. The CCRC requested an investigation into this character which revealed that he was a member of the police force and has a record as a ‘peeping tom’ and was charged for harassment. The investigators highlighted these points because of the methods Mr smith used to go about his doings – he used back windows for entry to houses and described his own actions during his ‘peeping’ activities to be very similar to the description of the man he had seen, in his witness statement on the night of the murder of Mr and Mrs Pool. But the commission still thought it wasn’t possible that anyone other than Mr Warner committed the crime because of the jumper fibres; but there was no connection between Smith and the Pools, which i believe to be suspicious.

In spite of this, the commission identified that Mr Warner took a shirt belonging to Mr Pool, again suggesting he did in fact go upstairs, and had lied in his early statements to the police, so his trustworthiness was already in question, and that there was a fingerprint above the kitchen drawer suggesting where the murder weapon had come from. Mr Knox, a man Mr Warner lived with, gave evidence to suggest Warner was out until after the estimated time of the murders and his behaviour the morning after the murder was said to be suspicious (taking footwear from the night before out of town with him).

I believe the two pieces of forensic evidence used in defence of dropping the case are the most important, though the DNA profile was incomplete, the chances of cross contamination of the bedding and jumper are slim (they were stored by police separately) and suggest to me that Mr wasn’t telling the truth about going upstairs, particularly after lying before. and so I think that the right decision was made by the CCRC in not taking the case to the court of appeal.