By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (December 13th 2009)<\/p>\n
Review?<\/strong><\/p>\n Fed up of the failure to get justice or even an adequate review of the conduct of a disgraced pathologist, a prisoner maintaining his innocence, has demanded a review of his own. Neil Sayers was just a teenager when his friend Russell Crookes was repeatedly stabbed to death in a field near Hadlow College in Kent in May 1998. A year later Sayers was found guilty of the murder along with fellow student Graham Wallis, whose evidence sent Sayers to jail. Sayers has maintained his innocence ever since. His case was not one of the cases reviewed by David Jessel for the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), but Heath\u2019s conduct was unusual in this case. His opinion that there was extensive fire-damage was contradicted by his own post-mortem examination.<\/p>\n After hearing that Heath was recently let off by the General Medical Council (GMC) Sayers has had enough. He is the first prisoner protesting his innocence to instruct his solicitor Steven Bird to apply for legal aid to instruct a forensic pathologist to review the pathology-related issues, including those that Jessel’s review of cases involving Heath at the CCRC did not consider, regardless of the conclusions of the CCRC.<\/p>\n Bird hopes to instruct a forensic pathologist with experience of Heath\u2019s work in the new year to review Heath\u2019s conduct and the impact it had on the conclusions of other experts, particularly fire-related aspects of the case. Sayers maintains that it happened days after the prosecution claim it did and there is considerable evidence that was not heard by the jury to support his opinion. For example, there were statements of witnesses who did not see the scorch pattern and associated debris on three different searches of the area days after the Crown say the fire occurred. These statements languished in the unused material. Some of those witnesses gave evidence, but were not asked about the lack of a scorch-pattern on their visits. It was noticed on May 24th 1998 \u2013 two days before the body was discovered in nearby woods, but these statements were not disclosed for Sayers\u2019 trial.<\/p>\n Sayers was also let down by his then lawyers from the firm of Berry and Berry. Just a year earlier they had represented burglar Craig Kerwin when he was charged over the death of pensioner Jocelyn Strutt at her home in Southborough, Kent. Only Heath maintained that Strutt had been murdered by being hit with a heavy instrument that fractured her ribs \u2013 actually she suffered from brittle bones and her ribs probably broke when she fell.<\/p>\n Two other forensic pathologists (Nat Cary and Vesna Djurovi\u0107) disagreed with Heath and proved that Strutt\u2019s death was of natural causes \u2013 the result of a myocardial infarct that ruptured and her ribs broke in the fall that followed that event. Despite this Sayers\u2019 lawyers failed to investigate Heath\u2019s conduct in other cases, which would have provided important material on Heath\u2019s credibility. Over a decade later, Sayers wants that review and Bird will try to ensure that he gets that right after the CCRC\u2019s review of Heath \u2013 the only review of the shamed expert\u2019s cases since his spectacular fall from grace \u2013 failed to discover this material and how it could have affected Sayers\u2019 case.<\/p>\n The Fall of the Disgraced Pathologist<\/strong><\/p>\n Meanwhile, the disgraced pathologist continues to perform post-mortem examinations for coroners despite being forced to resign from the Register of Home Office Pathologists after a disciplinary tribunal found that he had slipped below the required standard over the deaths of Jacqueline Tindsley and Mary Ann Moore. Tindsley was found dead in her bed after her partner Steven Puaca raised the alarm in March 2002. Heath insisted that Puaca had smothered her, resulting in Puaca\u2019s conviction later that year. He was cleared on appeal in 2005 after five forensic pathologists disagreed with Heath\u2019s conclusions.<\/p>\n Moore was found dead at the bottom of the stairs of the house she shared with her partner Kenneth Fraser in May 2001. Heath wrongly insisted that her injuries were consistent with murder. Fraser was acquitted the following year. The evidence, as Heath now accepts, was consistent with an accidental fall down the stairs. Ironically, another Home Office forensic pathologist, Dr Peter Acland, was suspended in April by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) for making the opposite mistake.<\/p>\n Acland ruled the death of pensioner Mervin Fletcher at his home near Walsall in 2004 was due to head injuries caused by a fall induced by diabetes. He was wrong. Mustafa Abdullah was convicted of Fletcher\u2019s murder in 2007 after using the victim\u2019s cards to withdraw money from his account. The NPIA upheld nineteen of twenty-one charges against Dr Acland over his conduct in that case and suspended him from working for the police again. Heath no longer works as a forensic pathologist either, as he was forced to resign from the Register of Home Office Pathologists.<\/p>\n Tribunals<\/strong><\/p>\n Three years ago a tribunal of the Advisory Board for Forensic Pathologists upheld twenty complaints against Heath over his handling of the deaths of Moore and Tindsley, so Heath resigned from the Register. It was not the end of his problems. Any case that he was involved in that the CCRC had been asked to consider \u2013 apart from ones that had resulted in successful appeals \u2013 was reviewed by their Commissioner Jessel, but the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith refused demands for a full investigation of all Heath\u2019s cases. This summer the General Medical Council held a tribunal to decide whether Heath was fit to continue as a doctor due to his conduct over the deaths of Moore and Tindsley. It concluded that his remorse was genuine and there was no need for further punishment.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring your career as a pathologist you have undertaken some 10,000 forensic pathology cases, of which none had been criticised prior to the two cases related to these proceedings, and none had been criticised since,\u201d the panel said. This was quite simply not true.<\/p>\n Serious concerns about Heath\u2019s competence were raised over a decade ago including the death of Stuart Lubbock in the entertainer, Michael Barrymore\u2019s pool in March 2001. He took eleven years to become a Member of\u00a0the Royal College of Pathologists. The reason \u2013 he repeatedly failed his exams. That emerged during cross examination in an inquest into another of Heath\u2019s controversial cases (Ibrahima Sey).<\/p>\n Heath\u2019s evidence has been found wanting in several cases both before and since the two cases that ended his career as a forensic pathologist as well.<\/p>\n Options<\/strong><\/p>\n In October 2006 Jessel decided that only eight of fifty-four cases that had applied to them which involved Heath should be looked at again. It didn\u2019t include Sayers\u2019 case and three years on not one of those cases were referred back to the Court of Appeal on the basis of Heath\u2019s evidence. Only Simon Hall\u2019s conviction for the December 2001 murder of Joan Albert will be considered by the appeal court. Hall was convicted in 2003, but the CCRC referred it back on the basis of fibre evidence rather than Heath\u2019s conduct.<\/p>\n It leaves the wrongfully convicted little option but to try to instruct forensic pathologists themselves to review Heath\u2019s work as Sayers has done. None of Acland\u2019s cases have been reviewed either. In the absence of adequate reviews others will probably follow Sayers\u2019 example. Despite the best efforts of the authorities this story will run and run.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (December 13th 2009) Review? Fed up of the failure to get justice or even [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[315,270,191,368,316,369,370,371,372,195,373,374,375,376,377,378,324,379,380,327,381,122,200,382,383,384,385,386,387,388,389,390],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1273"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2381,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1273\/revisions\/2381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}