On Christmas eve the QLD Court of Appeal handed down a judgment providing for the retrial of the murder trial of Graham Stuart Stafford, who was convicted of murder of a school girl in 1992, and was released on parole in 2006. Despite being released he has continued to fight to clear his name of the murder. The Charles Smith blog contains a neat discussion of the background:

Graham Stuart Stafford was a sheet metal worker from Goodna, near Ipswich, Queensland who was convicted in 1992 of the murder of twelve-year-old Leanne Sarah Holland. Leanne Holland, the younger sister of Stafford’s former partner, Melissa Holland, was murdered in September 1991. Her viciously mutilated body was found three days after she was reported missing in nearby Redbank Plains. It is possible she was also sexually interfered with and tortured with a cigarette lighter.

The conviction of Stafford was based entirely on circumstantial evidence, although that evidence seemed very compelling at the time:

1. He was home alone with the deceased on the day that the murder took place;
2. Small deposits of the deceased’s blood were found in the bathroom of the house and Stafford’s car.
3. The deceased was killed with a blunt instrument to the head and there was a hammer in Stafford’s room in the house;
4. Stafford was seen driving from the direction that the deceased’s body was found a few mornings after her death (the suggestion was that he had used that opportunity to dump the body);
5. There was a maggot found in the boot of Stafford’s car that was arguably similar to maggots found in the deceased’s body.

The case presented by the prosecution at trial (based on this evidence) was that Stafford has killed the deceased at the home in the bathroom, placed her in his boot and then dumped her body at the location some two days later. Stafford was obviously found guilty. Although such an award of guilt was not a complete indication that the jury accepted the prosecution’s theory of the case, one would assume that it did.

The problem was that the theory presented by the prosecution was not truly sustainable. The lack of blood found in the cracks in the bathroom (which are basically impossible to clean of all traces of blood, particularly in the time that was available for Stafford) indicated that the murder could not have taken place there. Once it was accepted that the murder did not take place in the house much of the prosecution’s case broke down.

The Court of Appeal unanimously decided that the initial conviction was not safe. However, there was a split on the issue of whether there should be a retrial or an acquittal. A majority (Keane and Fraser JJA) of 2-1 favoured a retrial. Holmes JJA was in dissent. Keane JJA was the lead judgment for the majority.

Now the reason I find this case interesting, apart from the above, is how the facts are constructed differently in Keane JJA and Holmes JJA’s judgments. The Keane JJA judgment is first and after reading that one would probably hold the view that whilst the original case was unfair, Stafford still looks pretty guilty and accordingly a retrial is the appropriate order. However, Holmes JJA’s construction of the facts are somewhat different and on his version it seems highly improbable that Stafford committed the acts.

The point I make with this is how important the battle for facts is in a court case (whether it be criminal or civil). I remember a few years ago I was involved in a case where the client had instructed my firm some time after the dispute had initially occurred. Accordingly correspondence had already been sent between the two parties – the other party had instructed lawyers and had sent detailed letters outlining their version of the facts. In contrast, the client had merely responded with short letters asserting his legal rights. The problem with this was that the other party had used the first opportunity to put their version and the client had not responded with his version. Now whilst this would not be decisive in a case, it is very unhelpful – such letters are often the first thing a judge will read -  we were behind in respect of winning the narrative. The Stafford case reminded me of the importance of winning that narrative – right from the beginning.

In a more political sense, the case also reminds me of one of the reasons I find capital punishment so abhorrent – in court cases the search for the truth is all but impossible and we ultimately have to merely accept approximations of the truth. On the case initially proposed by the prosecution, Stafford looked very guilty. It is only when each aspect of the case was broken down that it became apparent that Stafford may not have committed the crime.