bernard spillsbury

[tali122]

it has been claimed that pathologist bernard spillsbury was arrogant and that his evidence caused many miscarriages of injustice- is this true or just an attempt to discredit him?

also did public humilation lead to his suicide?

thx

[shaneystar2]

It is said he committed suicide because in the last few years before he died he lost two sons. One died in an air raid and the other of consumption.His sister also died round about the same time.
He was in bad health ..had suffered three strokes and his hands were crippled with arthritis.
There was a case where the press conducted a smear campaign against him because the Jury in the case believed him over other medical experts.
In his later life judges did begin to express concern about his invincibility in court and recent researches have indicated that his inflexible dogmatism led to miscarraiges of justice.
Otherwise a clever man ,the father of forensics , who did groundbreaking stuff for the science of forensics as we know it today.

[dotjhawkes]

Brilliant shaneystar!

[don1]

The causes of miscarriage of justice have been of great interest for 35 years and even today so called "expert" evidence is still the main cause of innocent people being sent to jail for crimes they didn't commit.

"Experts" are very seldom as expert as the prosecution would have you believe.

Until 1996 not one person in the world had ever been found not guilty where there was fingerprint evidence and then the Shirley McKie case showed us that fingerprint evidence isn't all it is cracked up to be. Google Shirley McKie.

We are now finding already that the claim that DNA fingerprinting is infallible is also not all it is cracked up to be.

In Spillsbury's day he was paraded into court as if he was god. God knows how many innocent men he sent to jail or the gallows.