Australian man did NOT kill his parents

Final verdict after 19 years. Selective use of evidence by prosecution. Incorrect forensic science. Vengeful relative

IT WAS an extraordinary end to an extraordinary saga. Nineteen years after Helen and Stephen Gilham were stabbed to death in their southern Sydney home, their son Jeffrey was finally acquitted of the crimes by the highest court in NSW.

In a judgment that was scathing of the prosecution case and has brought renewed calls for change to the way forensic scientific evidence is used in trials, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal formally overturned the 2008 conviction of Mr Gilham and the two life sentences he had been given for the 1993 murders.

The 42-year-old father of three clutched the hand of his wife Robecca as the 2-1 majority decision was read, embracing her when the result finally became clear.

"This has been a horrendous experience for us. I'm glad today that I have been acquitted of the charges," Mr Gilham said. "I am very happy to be going home a free man and that's just all I want to do, is go home."

The judgment goes a considerable way to upholding Mr Gilham's 19-year insistence that it was not he, but his brother Christopher who was responsible for the murder of Helen and Stephen Gilham in the early hours of August 28, 1993.

Jeffrey Gilham admitted to killing Christopher, but said he did so in a fit of rage after discovering that his older sibling had killed their parents and was in the process of setting them on fire.

Police initially accepted Mr Gilham's story, allowing him to plead guilty to manslaughter for killing his 25-year-old brother. But there were others who did not accept it, most notably Tony Gilham, who was convinced that his nephew was guilty and began campaigning for him to be brought to trial. Police eventually reopened the investigation and in 2000 a coroner recommended that Mr Gilham be charged with the murder of his parents.

Eight years later, after one trial in which the jury failed to reach a verdict, Mr Gilham was convicted over the murder of his parents and given two consecutive life sentences.

But Mr Gilham appealed against the convictions to the state's highest court and presented new expert scientific evidence that cast doubt over a key part of the prosecution case.

An American toxicologist, David Penney, told the court that - contrary to the Crown case - Stephen, Helen and Christopher Gilham must have been alive when the fire was lit as they had significant amounts of carbon monoxide in their bloodstream.

This undermined the Crown's argument - based on testimony from its own expert - that Christopher had a "negative" level of CO in his bloodstream and thus must have been dead before the fire was lit.

It also brought into question the timing and sequence of events presented to the jury by the Crown Prosecutor, Margaret Cunneen, SC. The evidence proved crucial to the appeal panel's decision yesterday.

"[Dr Penney's] conclusions contradict two central elements of the Crown case as presented at trial," the judges said. "It is inevitable … that a miscarriage of justice has occurred."

The judges also upheld Mr Gilham's claim that the prosecution misled the jury by leading evidence about apparent "similarity" between the clustered stab wounds on the three deceased.

The appeal heard that this conclusion was not supported by forensic science, with clusters of stab wounds commonplace in many homicides, including those that involved more than one victim and more than one killer.

The judges noted that Ms Cunneen had elected not to call a Victorian forensic expert, Stephen Cordner, who had given evidence in pre-trial hearings that such conclusions could not be drawn, calling, instead, a forensic expert with a more favourable view.

"[The] evidence of a pattern in the stab wounds suffered by each of the deceased was wrongly admitted as expert evidence and, for that reason, is not available to be used by the Crown at any retrial, further weakening the Crown case," Justice Fullerton said.

Though Mr Gilham's support group hailed the decision as "justice finally done", not everyone agreed. Leaving the court, Tony Gilham, Jeffrey's uncle, said: "It's not over yet Jeffrey - I'll fix you." He said the court's decision was "a miscarriage of justice" and he would ask the DPP to consider an appeal to the High Court. He said his nephew was a "family killer".

Nevertheless the decision stands and it is unlikely to be appealed.

Coming just four months after Gordon Wood was acquitted over the murder of his girlfriend Caroline Byrne, it has also raised further questions about the way alleged offenders are tried in NSW.

In particular, it raises questions about the use of forensic scientific evidence to prove a person's guilt or innocence, and the ability of juries to understand this evidence and its fallibility.

"I think it highlights how potentially damaging, unreliable and speculative experts can be," Professor Gary Edmond, a legal expert in forensic science from the University of NSW, said of the decision last night.

"It is hopefully part of a a slow move, following the decisions in Wood, towards requiring trial judges to be more attentive to the opinions that experts express. It also seems to suggest that some of the trial safeguards, like cautionary ruling to juries, might not be as affective as juries believe."

Original report here




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