Barry George loses Dando murder compensation bid.

[anonymous-user]

Wanted £500,000 for wrongful conviction.

Got nothing.

http://news.sky.com/story/1113385/barry-george-los...

[anonymous-user]

Centurion07 said:

First comment on there:

"Whilst not necessarily right..

Currently, anyone who overturns their conviction must have been 'shown conclusively to be innocent' before compensation is considered.

It is an acquittal, but does not prove him innocent, more of a not really enough evidence to confirm guilt beyond reasonable doubt."

Sounds about right to me.

I would agree.

[anonymous-user]

Mr Gearchange said:

Hadn't he been previously arrested/charged/found guilty of bunch of other wierdo creepy st* though?

According to Wikipedia:

Convicted of:
Impersonating a Police officer.
Attempted rape.
Indecent assault.

He was also charged but not convicted of multiple other sexual assaults and attacks on women, including his then wife who described the ordeal as "terrifying and violent" but wouldn't testify as she had returned to Japan.

He was also arrested in the grounds of Kensington palace wearing a balaclava and carrying a 12" hunting knife, climbing rope and a poem about Princess Diana.

[anonymous-user]

Dr Jekyll said:

The point about Barry George was the complete lack of evidence. Some people seem to think that anyone on trial is by definition guilty.

The fundamental evidence, since discounted, was the forensic evidence around gun powder and fibre transfer. If the now-defunct Forensic Science Service writes a report saying how improbable such forensic transfers are, and you have other circumstantial evidence (he was IDed at the scene by a witness IIRC), then what are the police going to do? They present it to the CPS who'll make a decision to charge or not.

The key failure was the assessment of the forensic evidence (surely the defence had their own experts to examine it, too?).

[anonymous-user]

Dr Jekyll said:

But even if the gun powder wasn't the result of contamination. It simply implied that Barry George had been in contact with ammunition at some time, not that he had shot Jill Dando or anyone else. Incidentally the jacket with the gunpowder in it bore no resemblance to the jacket witnesses saw a suspect wearing at the time. BG did have such a jacket and the prosecution argument was that he had been wearing it to shoot JD, but no gunpowder was found on it.

John McVicar wrote a book explaining why he was convinced Barry George was guilty and in it he remarked that even the prosecution were flabbergasted by the guilty verdict.

The FDR was presented by the prosecution as only being able to come from the same gun that killed Dando. This was based on a fundamentally wrong FSS report. The FSS changed their guidelines to their scientists following this case to no-longer consider one particle significant. The defence expect at the original trial discredited it much in the way it was finally dismissed, but for some reason that didn't seem to matter much.

There's are nearly always evidential inconsistencies around descriptions etc. There aren't often key pieces of bad forensic evidence and incorrect conclusions drawn like there were here.