Limited Scope It's been almost five years since a Home Office Pathology Advisory Board tribunal concluded that the pathologist Michael Heath was guilty of: "vigorously advancing forensic pathological conclusions based on an unacceptable level of speculation without evidential foundation and demonstrating a degree of inflexibility when confronted with reasoned contrary opinions by colleagues which might be dangerous to the objective presentation of expert testimony." So what has happened since then?
Heath immediately resigned from the Home Office's register of forensic pathologists. The then Attorney General, Baron (Peter) Goldsmith watched developments carefully. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) began a review of all of its cases where Heath had been involved. Its Commissioner, David Jessel, not a panel of qualified forensic pathologists, or even one, conducted the review of fifty-four cases. He focused on medical evidence. Why? There were other issues as well that were related to forensic pathology that may have affected the safety of convictions.
Only eight cases were deemed worthy of further investigation by Jessel. Three were referred back to the Court of Criminal Appeal, but one of those, Simon Hall, was on the credibility of the fibre evidence, rather than Heath's conduct. Heath's role in Hall's case was marginal anyway. The same could not be said of the convictions of Mushtaq Ahmed and Kenneth Noye, but it made little difference. They lost their appeals as well.
Slammed Shut Not one of the fifty-four cases reviewed has been deemed unsafe by the CCRC and Court of Appeal. Only two cases – both direct appeals – resulted in convictions being quashed. Mark Laverick won his appeal, largely because Heath's conclusions could not be relied on. That happened in June 2007. A few months earlier in November 2006 Alex O'Leary aka Paul Dwyer won a retrial based on Heath's evidence.
Sir Igor Judge, later to become the current Lord Chief Justice, sitting with Mr Justices (Sir Thayne) Forbes and (Sir Colman) Treacy, made a telling contribution before the appeal judges quashed the conviction and ordered a retrial that became the mantra used to slam the lid down firmly on the Heath Scandal. “Even if Dr Heath's evidence was challenged at trial, it does not follow that the convictions will all be unsafe. Some will remain safe, even if his evidence lent support to the Crown's case. Some, of course, and this is one, will not.”
It took another three and a half years after Laverick's successful appeal for a CCRC referral on Heath to be heard by the Court of Appeal. Mushtaq Ahmed's conviction was not deemed unsafe and a few months later, nor was Kenneth Noye's. In between Simon Hall's conviction was upheld. It seems the door was not so much shut on appeals involving Heath as locked and then bolted too. |