DETECTIVES investigating the murder of teenager Jodi Jones were yesterday accused of "casting fairness aside" in their "indecent haste" to link Luke Mitchell to the crime.
Donald Findlay, Mitchell's QC, said officers had shown a series of photographs to a witness and the picture of Mitchell stood out from the others.
He also claimed that, in showing the witness photographs, rather than holding an ID parade, offic
ers deprived Mitchell of the chance to have a solicitor present to monitor the line-up.
The behaviour of the police was in "flagrant and blatant" breach of guidelines, Mr Findlay claimed. "The police flaunted the procedures… fairness to the accused did not feature in the equation… I would suggest an indecent haste to try to get (the witness] to identify Luke lay behind the high-handed and cack-handed approach of the police."
Mitchell, now 19, is serving a minimum of 20 years under a life sentence after being convicted in 2005 of murdering his girlfriend Jodi in 2003, when they were both aged 14. Her mutilated body was found in woods at Roan's Dyke path, Dalkeith, Midlothian. Mitchell is seeking to have the conviction quashed at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh.
At Mitchell's trial, one of the prosecution's key pieces of evidence came from Andrina Bryson, who said she saw a male and a female as she drove past the Easthouses end of the path. It was at a time when Mitchell claimed to have been at home.
Mrs Bryson was shown 12 photographs by police and picked out Mitchell as looking like the male she had seen.
Mr Findlay submitted copies of the 12 photographs to the appeal judges. He said most, if not all, of the others were three or four years younger than Mitchell, adding: "It is obvious at a casual glance that his picture stands out from the rest. The background is demonstrably lighter … he has a noticeably different hairstyle. Anyone looking at these photos is inevitably drawn to (Mitchell's]. There was a very clear risk that the witness would be drawn to it and that must have been obvious to the police. This cast serious doubt on the value of her identification."
The QC said guidelines in force at that time stated that photographs should not be shown if circumstances allowed for physical identification.
He added: "The police elected to proceed by photograph… the correct course was to proceed by an identification parade. At a parade, Mitchell would have been represented by a solicitor (who] would have been in a position to state objections to stand-ins.
"Because the police elected to proceed by photograph, he was deprived of this important safeguard. This was a manifest unfairness."
Mr Findlay said no proper explanation had been given for not holding a parade.
"It is clear the police considered the evidence of Andrina Bryson to be potentially crucial.
"It ought to have been treated with the greatest of care and it was not. The police sought to make the most of what little they had and, in so doing, cast fairness aside," said Mr Findlay.
He also criticised the sinister slant put by the prosecution at the trial on evidence that Mitchell had found Jodi's body behind a wall on the path. According to the Crown, he had known it was there to be found because he was her killer.
Mr Findlay said it was common sense to have looked over the wall when there was no sign of Jodi on the path. "It was an obvious place to consider, yet this is presented as something sinister. But for the intervention of Mitchell, the search party would have made its way down the path, leaving Jodi alone, dead and in the darkness of the woods."
The hearing continues.
