Despite being clearly innocent Stephen Miller was even accused of concocting an alibi, when unknown to him vital statements were gathering dust in the unused material. He had forgotten that he had seen people in the nearby Casablanca nightclub minutes after the police and prosecution say the murder was committed. There were no traces of blood on his clothes and he showed no change in general demeanour. He was either the greatest actor still undiscovered by Hollywood, or he was obviously innocent. While Miller remembered none of this, his lawyers and the police, Crown had easy access to it.

Police had taken statements months earlier that proved Miller innocent. He was seen approximately twenty minutes after the most likely time of the murder playing pool. He was wearing the same clothes that he had been seen in earlier that night. They included a pair of stone-washed jeans – the white parts had dirt on them. If Miller was guilty he had to have committed that atrocious murder without any of her blood landing on him or his clothes, or he had to clean himself and his clothes so thoroughly that not even a minute trace, invisible to the naked eye, remained without interfering the dirt on the white parts of his jeans. Both he and his clothes had to dry in minutes without betraying any sign that they had been cleaned recently. He had to remove every trace of scientific evidence that tied him to the flat and to White without showing any sign of interfering with the plethora of scientific evidence that had been left behind. Having achieved all that he then had to go to the Casablanca to play pool within minutes of the most likely time of the murder without betraying the slightest sign that anything untoward had happened.

He had to manage to do all that with the intelligence quotient of an eleven-year-old child. Stephen Miller had forgotten about the witnesses whose statements proved this, but the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and most shamefully of all, his own defence lawyers, had access to them, but missed how important they really were.

Having heard his confession they could not unhear it and they could not keep it in the neat compartment the judge demanded of them. Directing them not to use it against his co-accused was tantamount to giving alcoholics the keys to a pub and directing them not to have a drink.

 by Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (December 27th 2008)