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Aug

The Crime of Innocence

Written by Satish Sekar

A Preventable Tragedy
Phillip Skipper died of cancer in November 2004, aged just 48. He died denied the justice he wanted. Seven and a half years earlier, he had stood trial and been acquitted of a crime that shocked Cardiff. His estranged wife Karen – they were living together while having relationships with others – was murdered in the night of March 9th 1996. She had drowned in the River Ely. Her body was found there the morning after. Her hands had been bound tightly behind her back with her dogs' leads.

This would turn into a preventable miscarriage of justice. John Pope was questioned in the course of the inquiry. He denied knowing either Karen or Phillip Skipper, a story that would later change dramatically. Meanwhile, Mr Skipper had been questioned, first as a witness and then as a suspect. The evidence against him was circumstantial, based on opportunity and motive. He had an alibi of sorts. He had been out drinking with Karen and they had returned together. There was conflicting evidence about that night. Skipper claimed that it was perfectly normal and amicable. Other told a different tale, but so what? There were tensions in the relationship, but again, so what? There might have been reasons to suspect Skipper, but there was also evidence that proved him innocent.

Error of Judgement
Police were aware of one pertinent blood-stain in 1996 – in fact there two. It was on the lining of the front pocket of the black jeans that Mrs Skipper wore on the night that she died, but it was on the side touching her skin. It had dried quickly and the appearance of the stain indicated that it was the result of direct contact. This was plainly significant. There were precious few who had legitimate access to the inside of Karen Skipper's jeans.

In other words, a person whose finger was bleeding had touched the fabric, depositing the blood on an intimate part of Karen Skipper's clothing. But DNA testing quickly eliminated both Karen and Phillip Skipper as the source of that blood-staining. That should have been that. Either this blood-stain was significant and plainly police thought it was – why else would they have it DNA tested? – or it was not, in which case, why bother with it?

When John Pope stood trial in 2009, it was largely due to these stains – another had been located on Karen Skipper's knickers. While Low Copy Number procedures had assisted greatly, the integrated approach that we have championed should have been deployed and prevented a travesty of justice. Low Copy was new and so was SGM+ STR typing, but that was only part of the story.

The significance of the blood-stains and the DNA had to be interpreted and that involved old-fashioned science that was available all along – the appearance of the stain, its position and its characteristics all told an important story. Direct contact was the most likely explanation of how the stains were deposited and the evidence suggested that it had not soaked through from the inside of the pocket to the skin side of it.

Tragic
Tragically the police and criminal justice system failed to realise the significance of this evidence. It could and should have saved great resources and spared three families an awful ordeal. Phillip Skipper died an innocent man whose innocence had not been recognised or accepted by Karen's family. Some were even glad he had died in such a fashion. They can't take that back, now they are convinced that the man they had once welcomed into their family and loved and come to hate, was in fact innocent, just as he had assured them.

Even on his death-bed Phillip Skipper maintained his innocence. His movements and behaviour may have been odd, but the science should have proved him innocent from the very start. Karen was renowned to be a hygienic person, but even without that the case against Skipper was absurd. The blood-stain was very inconvenient. Its importance had to be overcome. Police traced where Karen had bought the jeans and when, suggesting that the stain had been there when she bought the jeans. What? Why did nobody laugh this nonsense out of the place? It meant that Karen Skipper had bought those jeans several weeks before her murder and never washed them at all in all the time she had owned them. It was hardly likely and had that been realised the whole inquiry could and should have gone down a different track altogether. An innocent man need not have stood trial. A victim's family could have been spared the trauma of hating the wrong man only to find out later that they were wrong and a young woman could have grown up without having her father's memory trashed three times in courtrooms after his tragically early death. British justice owes them all an apology, especially the memory of Phillip Skipper. It also owes his family, and Karen's too, an explanation and investigation of how this was allowed to happen.

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