Justice Site | Case Name: R v Michael John Stone |
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Michael Stone |
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The Prosecution. "The evidence of the
main prosecution witness Damien Daley should not be dismissed This website is paradoxically not so much about Michael Stone, who was convicted of murder before two juries, as it is about whether a person can ever receive a fair trial and be safely convicted on the strength of a confession which merely repeats facts that are in the public domain and hence which are known even to the proverbial man 'sitting on the Clapham Omnibus'. Michael Stone was arrested on 18th July 1997 just after a year following the crime as a result of a tip-off from his psychiatrist who had become perturbed by Stone's psychotic state. He denied any knowledge of the crime and was remanded in custody while an ID parade was arranged. On 23rd September 1997 he was moved to a cell next to a heroin addict named Damien Daley who had a history of dishonesty and crime and who admitted to being an accomplished liar in order "to get by in life." In the evening Michael Stone made one of the most remarkable confessions in the history of crime through a small gap between a heating pipe and the adjoining cell wall, which Damien Daley reported to the police three days later. The Confession - 'spoken' by Michael Stone on 23rd September
1997
The jury agreed with Damien Daley that it would have been "like winning the lottery" for him to have concocted these details of the crime which only the murderer could have known, and accordingly Michael Stone was found guilty. The jury was not told however that the points of detail described in the confession had actually been published in the morning newspapers on the 23rd September 1997 (the day of the 'confession'). The jury was told that Daley had read about some of the details of the crime in The Daily Mirror published on that day, but it was not told about when or where the other details had appeared in the public domain - only that "they were either in the public domain, or capable of being inferred from material in the public domain." The jury therefore could only speculate on how easy or difficult it might have been for Daley (or even Stone) to have concocted the confession from information available to them. The witholding of evidence regarding the publication of the details of the crime in the national press on 23rd September 1997 resulted in an unfair trial on the central issue: was the confession a concoction? Had the jury been aware of the coincidence of the newspaper articles, its verdict may well have been different - for if prisoners could be aware of the contents of the Daily Mirror, why not other newspapers? The Daily Mirror - published
on 23rd September 1997 The Daily Mail - published on
23rd September 1997
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The details of the crime as allegedly 'confessed' by Michael Stone (on the day when every national newpaper carried an article about the crime) was either an amazing coincidence (ie Stone was the murderer) or else it was a clumsy concoction extracted from the newspapers by Daley or Stone which was not worth the paper it was printed on. Daley's task would have been easier if he had simply asked the police to read the newspaper articles that were published on the day of the 'confession', as being evidence of what was said. None of these factors however raised any concerns with the prosecuting authorities who were not embarrassed to hold up the confession as 'proof' that Stone was the murderer, while deliberately concealing the newspapers from the jury. The jury decided by a 10-2 majority that Stone had confessed, but they were not told by the judge that even if he had shouted his confession from the rooftops for the whole world to hear, it wouldn't have proved that he was actually the murderer, for even if he had confessed directly to the police, it would have had no value, as exactly the same details of the crime could be found in the morning newspapers. The link between the 'confession' and the newspaper articles was so coincidental that to have concealed it from the juries in two trials was a travesty of justice, not only for Michael Stone, but for the victims of this crime and for the future victims of the actual perpetrator. If the newspapers published on the 23rd September 1997 had been shown to the jury alongside the 'confession', the possibility of their reaching a verdict of guilt "beyond reasonable doubt" would have been seriously compromised. 1st Trial At the 1st trial (Oct 1998) Anne Rafferty QC (now elevated to Mrs Justice Rafferty) confidently relied on the testimony of two other prisoners, Barry Thompson and Mark Jennings, who had heard Stone making incriminating remarks which tended to support Daley's evidence about the confession. She opened the prosecution's case by telling the jury that according to a psychiatrist's opinion "Stone was in the mood for killing." A friend of Stone - Sheree Batt - was called to testify that she remembered seeing Stone a year previously wearing a blood-stained tee shirt at around the time of the murders. After the trial however, Thompson admitted to a newspaper he had told the jury "a pack of lies" in order to obtain a fee of £5,000 from ‘The Sun’ newspaper for his story (with the promise of an additional £10,000 if Stone was convicted); Jennings's family confirmed they had received money from a tabloid newspaper; while Sheree Blatt's mother publicly disowned her daughter for lying. The Guardian (15th Mar 1999) - A witness in the Michael Stone murder trial lied under oath when she said he had blood on his T-shirt the morning after the killings, her mother claimed last night. Mrs Jean Batt said that police investigating the killings had also offered her the chance of a £20,000 reward, a letter to the judge to help in her appeal against a heroin conviction and a prison of her choice if she said the same thing as her daughter - but she refused. Mrs Batt says her daughter has been relocated and she refuses to speak to her. "I disowned her because of her lying," she said. "If Mick done it he wants cutting up in little pieces and put down a sewer. All right, he's a psycho but he didn't kill them. They had no forensic and people lied in the witness box for money. Me and my husband are the only two out of the whole lot who haven't sold our souls." 1st Appeal As a result of the discredited testimony of the fellow convicts, the Court of Appeal ordered a retrial. It is interesting to note that the prosecution had thoroughly analysed hundreds of newspaper reports of the crime in order to argue that there would be no prejudice in allowing Stone to be tried a second time, yet in the 2nd trial no mention was made of any of these articles, particularly those published on 23rd September 1997 - other than the Daily Mirror which Daley had admitted reading. 2nd Trial At the 2nd trial (Sept 2001), Sheree Batt's evidence of blood on a tee-shirt was still admitted, which helped to establish guilt in regard to the confession in the same way as the false testimony of the fellow prisoners did in the 1st trial. Mr Nigel Sweeney QC told the jury: "We must make you sure that he admitted it to Mr Daley", while Mr William Clegg QC meekly defended by saying if there had been some talk "there was no proof the voice belonged to Stone." These arguments however were totally irrelevant to proving guilt, because anyone following the news (even the judge) could have cobbled together the same confession which Daley said he had heard. Stone was nevertheless found guilty. 2nd Appeal In Stone's 2nd Appeal (Jan 2005) Lord Justice Rose acknowledged that "the prosecution accepts there was nothing in the confession which was not either in the public domain or capable of being inferred from material in the public domain", but then dismissed the appeal saying "the alleged confession contained many points of detail which the jury heard would not have been easy to invent in the time-scale available to Daley." (Daley's police statement was made on the evening of 26th September, 3 days after Stone's 'confession' on the 23rd).The case had been given wide publicity for more than a year, and Daley had remembered "vague details" of the crime shown in the July 1997 BBC Crimewatch episode and "may have seen some television news" while in prison. Like most prisoners he also had access to newspapers.The few 'points of detail' found in Daley's statement were however all published in the national press on the day of the confession, except for an oblique reference to a shoelace, so there was no need to 'invent' anything. The evidence for concoction was so strong precisely because the confession allegation arose on the day of publication of the facts of the crime and moreover because it contained all the published details of the crime and no other details. Lord Justice Rose agreed with the prosecution that their chief witness upon whose word the conviction was to hang was "a dishonest criminal with an ability to lie when it suited him, even on oath", but nevertheless the court decided that "this was no reason to regard the appellant's conviction as unsafe." A witness of truth for the prosecution can therefore be an inveterate bare-faced liar and still be acceptable in the eyes of the law for securing a 'safe' conviction beyond reasonable doubt. This was a case where the prosecuting authorities not only replaced commonsense with naivety but were prepared to withhold evidence in order to obtain a conviction at all costs. The urgent need to continue searching for the actual murdererer, who remained free to carry on killing for another ten years, was swept aside on the strength of evidence which, if true, would indeed have been "like winning the lottery." |
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| Levi Bellfield
An 'agitated' suspect seen driving away from the crime scene had "a round red face with chubby cheeks, short gingery blond hair with a fringe, and a fair complexion. He was aged between 20yrs and 30yrs." Josie Russell said the murderer got out of his car and assaulted her when she tried to run away. He was "blonde, clean-shaven, about 25 yrs old, and a tall man, like my father " (6').
It is yet to be established whether Bellfield adopted his 'blonde' look in the summer of 1996, but his resemblance to the E-fit merits further investigation in the light of his convictions for murder in 2008. In any event, if Josie Russell was right about the murderer's height - and she would know because she was in direct physical contact with him - that fact alone would rule out Michael Stone, and would explain why she was unable to pick him out in the identity parade: she was looking for a much bigger man - "like my father." Michael Stone was then 36yrs old and is 5' 7" tall. He was noticeably shorter than her father, considerably shorter than Bellfield, and older than the suspect described. His hair was receding and mid-brown - and he does not have a "red face" or "chubby cheeks", whereas Bellfield does.
The description of the suspect seen in Cherry Gardens Lane in 1996 and the resemblance to Bellfield may look like a remarkable coincidence, but given the history of Bellfield's crimes and the basis of Stone's conviction, it is more likely there were not two hammer murderers driving around looking for random victims, but only one. The police said when issuing the e-fit "make no mistake, this could be the murderer."
The question for the police
to investigate is whether he was in the Chillenden area close to Canterbury around 9th
July 1996; and if so, whether there were two hammer maniacs on the streets at the
same time.
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LINKS DOCUMENTS NOTES: (i) Feb 2009 - A Scotland Yard task force is investigating Bellfield in relation to as many as 20 unsolved crimes, including murders, rapes, and a number of hammer assaults. These include the murder of Bellfield's schoolfriend Patsy Morris, 14, who was strangled in Hounslow in 1980, as well as hammer attacks on women in south-west London in 1994 and 1996. There are also attacks in Blackpool, where Bellfield went on holiday, and in Sussex, where he worked. (ii) In the recent aquittal of Barry George for murdering the TV presenter Jill Dando, the Court of Appeal said "it is impossible to know what verdict the jury would have reached had they been told that it was just as likely that the single particle of gun discharge found in his pocket came from some extraneous source, as it was that it came from a gun fired by the appellant. The verdict is unsafe and the conviction will be quashed." The same can be said of Michael Stone's 'confession': it was just as likely his 'confession' came from some extraneous source such as newspaper articles, as it was that it came from any words he spoke. How is Michael Stone any different from any other person who could recollect the published facts of the crime? (iii) As at February 2010 the Criminal Cases Review Commission are examining this case. The webmaster of this site urges the Commisson to refer the conviction of Michael Stone back to the Court of Appeal if they recognise the absurdity of convicting a man of murder solely on the basis of a confession which, even if it were made, merely recounts published facts and hence proves nothing in terms of establishing guilt. Letter to the Criminal Cases Review Commission - April 2009
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