Reasonable Doubt Point-by-Point

[Erik Narramore]

Jeremy didn't walk because it would appear the jury made a mistake.  Of course, none of us were there to hear what the jury heard, and we must always take that into account and be humble in our criticisms of the jury.  Yet at the same time the following points are inescapable:

1. At least three of jury dissented, and two of them stuck to their Not Guilty vote to the bitter end.  This fact alone shakes my confidence in the prosecution case.  Until the 1960s, the unanimity rule would have protected Jeremy in these circumstances and there would either have been a hung jury and a re-trial (with a greatly morally-weakened prosecution) or Jeremy would have been discharged altogether.  We could argue that we don't know what effect the maintenance of the unanimity protection would have had on a jury's decision in any particular case, but given the issues with the evidence, it must be considered likely that it would have favoured Jeremy, and once three or four jurors express scepticism under protection of law, then other jurors probably would have spoken up too, and he could well have been acquitted altogether.

2. The jury were misdirected by the trial judge on the blood evidence and Julie Mugford's criminal history.

3. Julie Mugford misled the court about her dealings with the press.

4. The response of Robert Boutflour to the jury's question was misleading in that he answered the question over-literally, omitting a crucial fact that his family would benefit from the estate.  If you stop to reflect on this: a normal honest person naive about the law would have answered the question expansively with something like, "Not me, but my wife...", etc.  Robert answered it more in the way a lawyer might.  Clearly he must have taken advice on his answer before giving it, which means there was collusion over the answer he should provide to the jury.

5. The significance of Sheila Caffell's psychiatric history was not completely disclosed to the jury.  The evidence from Sheila's psychiatrist did not cover all bases (though in fairness, this was not the fault of Dr Ferguson - to the contrary, it was Dr Ferguson himself who raised the issue after the trial). The only caveat to this point is that reliance is placed in this regard on Jeremy's assertion that fostering of the children was discussed immediately prior to the tragedy.

6. The pharmacological evidence was incomplete or misleading.  As far as I am aware, no expert clinical pharmacological evidence was heard.

7. One juror admitted to an Essex newspaper reporter that the jury didn't know what to make of it all after they were sent out and, had it not been for the second direction from the trial judge, which was a misdirection, Jeremy (quote) "would have walked".

8. Overall, reasonable doubt arises in the evidence, for a number of reasons I won't expand on here.  Anybody who is honest and looks at this case properly can see that.

[Erik Narramore]

For me, it's also the fact that it was never emphasised that the blood was not a precise match.  It was just the same blood group, but the jury were left with the impression that it was a match.  Even now, in retrospect with the DNA findings, anybody who says the blood was definitely Sheila's is just blustering.  The simple fact is that the blood in the silencer cannot be linked to Sheila with a level of certainty required for a criminal conviction.  Once you acknowledge this simple fact, a keystone of the prosecution case looks at least questionable, maybe falls away - depending on the overall view you take of things.

The anti-Jeremy camp will say that you have to consider everything in the round and the blood findings alongside Julie's evidence and the forensic findings from Sheila's body and clothing all point to Jeremy.  In other circumstances, I might have been persuaded by this sort of 'connect-the-dots' argument and accepted that 97% is enough, but in this case the police did not find the silencer, despite searching the property.  The relatives handled it and admitted that they tampered with it, and the relatives strongly disliked Jeremy and are emotionally- and financially-vested in Jeremy's convictions.  When you consider this and also consider the simple fact that the blood found in the silencer need not have come from Sheila and it has not been proved that it did, and then you consider the inconclusiveness of the later DNA findings, it's just not quite good enough, I'm afraid.

If you add 97 to 97 to 97 to 97, you still end up with 97% of 400.  The result is a picture that makes Jeremy look very guilty indeed, but that doesn't quite meet the bar to justify his conviction and incarceration.