Crime scene investigators, if they are good at their job, are independent; they are driven by where the evidence goes. They are almost exclusively employed by law enforcement organisations. In early 1999 I left the comfortable confines of the police service to set up my own consultancy. The prospect of offering my skills to those outside the police had been an attraction for many years. Consultancy for police forces, training of crime scene investigators and casework for defence work was to be a challenge.
Independence comes with its benefits and problems. Firstly there is the true ability to say exactly what you feel and be your own boss. At least your boss will appreciate you. There are, however, dangers, such as not pleasing your client and losing further work. The truth is the truth and you can’t change it. Some people don’t like that or are closed to the prospect, for any number of reasons. There is also the danger that you might step outside your field. I was determined to make sure I didn’t make those mistakes and my decision to undertake independent work was made because I consciously accepted this. So I stuck to what I knew best – crime scene investigation and management. I would not be involved in any direct comparison work. My skill was in finding potential evidence and putting it in front of a specialist who could realise that potential. As a manager and trainer, I would help others develop.
Telling the truth is obviously something I have valued. It was so when I was a member of the police organisation and it was the core value I took forward with me.
For the first few years I made a living out of offering the exact organisational development I had delivered in Surrey. Of course I listened to the needs of the forces I advised, but the organisational development which many forces needed to start with were the very same I had used in my previous post in Surrey.
Training of crime scene managers was a gift offered to me by Peter Ablett, Director of the National Training Centre based in Durham. Peter had been the first civilian scientific support manager in the UK when he was appointed in West Mercia Constabulary in 1989. He was a pioneer and later went to head up the national programme for crime scene personnel in 1991. I had a long association with the Centre at Durham through the society’s diploma. Peter was used as an examiner in the first of the society’s diploma examinations in 1991. Having seen the standard, he told me that the society’s diploma was for the élite within the profession.
Through Peter I was engaged to deliver the crime scene manager course at the training centre. Its programme was well developed and I was perfectly at home with it. Indeed I had many discussions with Peter and his predecessors, Detective Superintendent Brian Howe and Chief Superintendent (later Assistant Chief Constable) Eddy Merchant, about the need and content. These three men had over a long period of time made a massive contribution to the field of crime scene science. Durham had made a large contribution to forensic science in the UK over the years; Alex Muir, a former chief constable of Durham Constabulary, was a founder member and later president of the Forensic Science Society.
The crime scene manager course allowed me to add my own input and material within the course framework. The course programme had been running for a few years. The custodians at the time were Martin Parker (a forensic scientist) and Geoff Knupfer (a retired detective chief superintendent). The course was only five days and had only nine students. Apart from myself and a deputy, there were three facilitators, practitioners from other forces. The first day was spent in the classroom where the common needs, goals and practice of crime scene management were discussed. The real work was done on days two, three and four. This was where, divided into three-person teams, each student had the chance to be a crime scene manager in a developing investigation. All those involved in the day learned something from it, not just the scene manager but the team, facilitator and me. Trainee forensic scientists and senior investigators also got the opportunity to come along and play their part. The commitment of Keith Fryer (then deputy director) and Shaun Mallinson (then head of crime scene training) ensured that the course continued to develop with the greater participation of other practitioners.
The most valuable lessons learned on the course were those of listening, evaluation, planning and review. With this came communication and balancing investigative needs and the role of forensic scientists and other experts who would be called to the scene. The last day was left for a final debriefing. The scenes were as real as possible and always challenging. The managers had to lead and their two colleagues undertake the scene work under their direction. Nothing was notional. On one occasion a student crime scene manager was trying to speed things up asking for some notional resources. However, he failed to plan and make provision for his team’s lunch and so when he decided to break for lunch he found his lunch too was notional! I bet he never made that mistake again. This was the place to make mistakes and learn from them, safe in the knowledge that there isn’t a single right way of doing things and a simple change in the weather can alter plans. There is, however, a wrong way of doing things and that is when the manager doesn’t listen, evaluate, plan, action, record and review.
My other work as an independent consultant for defence solicitors may have sat awkwardly with some of my students and training colleagues. I, however, found it a strength. I always declared this work at the opening course introduction to see if it raised any response amongst the students or visiting facilitators. Sometimes it did and over the course I managed to expand on the work openly. To some police personnel it is a matter of taking sides, prosecution or defence, police or accused. I hope I offered some enlightenment. It is all a matter of truth for the crime scene investigator no matter who employs or instructs you. There are no versions of the truth, only the truth. By undertaking defence work, I was offered a window to see how the truth is sometimes obstructed or missed by the practice and application of the police and so I was able to introduce this to the training of my police students. It was a unique opportunity and most certainly in the interests of those who seek truth.
The defence work I undertook was often a challenge and I had to learn the needs of the instructing solicitor and their client. Not that I was there to meet their need but to test their needs in relation to the case against them. It is not the defence’s job to investigate, to show who is responsible for a crime. It is the defence’s role to defend the defendant and nothing else. No longer was I there to investigate, this was the police and prosecution role. This was the hardest challenge for me and often I was only allowed to look at and challenge work that the police had found. Sometimes there was an opportunity to question or comment on the investigation itself or perhaps the lack of it. So there were opportunities when the police had failed to investigate or had not sought to eliminate the defendant when there was an opportunity to do so. I too would often praise in my reports to the defence the work of the crime scene investigators or police, in particular when they undertook a piece of work in a way I would have done or would have been proud to be associated with.
As a defence expert, your work is only for the defence unless they offer it to the police. So if you find incriminating evidence which the police have missed there is no mechanism or right to inform the police. Indeed this would be a break of contract with the instructing defence solicitor and liable to legal action from them.
Finding the truth is something which some (and only some) defence solicitors fail to appreciate. This often leads to the lack of follow-up casework. On a number of occasions I have been pleasantly surprised by the need and brief given to me by a defence solicitor. In one case where a young man was accused of the violent and ritualistic murder of an elderly victim, the defence solicitor asked me to test the police case and if was strong and sound to say so, so that he might encourage his client to plead and take psychiatric help in order that he could mitigate on his behalf. I found this to be a sound search for the truth without neglecting the defence’s role to test the case.
No so the solicitor who was defending a man for the rape of a young woman. The defendant claimed that the woman had consented to sex, climbing on top of him as they lay on the grass. The woman stated that the suspect had pushed her on to the grass and it was he who jumped on top of her. The police investigators had only submitted the swabs which proved that sexual intercourse had taken place, which was not in dispute. Both parties agreed that it was a matter of consent. The suspect denied any assault. I arrange for the clothing to be examined for damage and staining. This proved that the woman had indeed been pushed on to her back whilst the man knelt. This evidence was never seen by the court and the man was acquitted of rape. The solicitor seemed pleased that the client had been acquitted, that he had done his job in defending his client. However, I felt that the victim of a rape had been denied the truth. This challenged my professional commitment to stick to establishing the truth and leaving the subject of justice to others. The truth, however, had not been heard and that was the fault of the original investigators, not the defence team. It was not my place to do anything, but it did not sit well. I wrote an article in The Police Review, without identifying the case, in a general effort to pass the lesson on. Titled ‘Where Have All the Detectives Gone?’, it unfortunately fell on stony ground. The point I wanted to convey was that police officers who were not, by rank at least, detectives had failed to ask the right question, instead using science to prove something which everyone already knew and accepted. They had failed to investigate and they could have used the same material as I had to prove the case. After all, it was in their possession. No detective or supervisor had noticed or corrected the matter.
My work for defence teams, often at appeal after conviction, has led me to believe that many miscarriages of justice occur when the original defence team fails to test the evidence at the first trial. Defence must be rigorous and complete. So I approach my work as a sceptic, not a judge, but one who tests the thought process, asks the right questions and seeks the right answers. These features have always been present in my work for the police and are used by sound and professional investigators but they are also neglected by some. They take on a new profound meaning when they are the last hope of the individual who is innocent until proven guilty.
Unfortunately, defence work is almost exclusively used to counter the specific evidence which the police have found. Any need or wish on my part to completely view the scientific investigation is seen by those officials who monitor the funding of defence work as an unnecessary fishing expedition. So in this regard I do little work like this for the legal profession. In my experience it only comes to light when a pressure group or TV documentary team fund the work. Only then can an alleged miscarriage of justice be examined from a scientific investigator’s view.
It must be somewhat unusual to deal with two cases in one career where the deceased share strange parallels and the same family name, even though one occurred in Mozambique and one in the heart of England.
The first case was that of Andrew and Caroline McGowan, a white couple who went missing in Mozambique, discussed in the previous chapter. The second case was of Errol McGowan, a black man living in the heart of England. He had been the subject of racial threats, but when he was found dead the police treated it as suicide and refused to look further, even when they were reminded of the threats.
The love of their families and their tenacity in seeking justice may not be unusual. In the two McGowan cases there were striking similarities from apparently diverse geographic locations and cultural expectations.
This raised questions for me about the way we treat the dead who we feel have been the victims of crime, and our expectations of the justice systems abroad and at home.