Great post Fairplay1 I think you've covered some of them already but I'll post my list too.
Evidence gathering/crime scene management
Treating LM as a suspect from the start then denying that was the case.
Forensically examining LM as soon as possible but not even realising that the other 3 members of the search party were important witnesses too and not asking for their clothing until at least 3-4 days later.
Not having a proper identity parade. Showing witnesses a leading photo line up and even a picture of LM in the newspaper.
Naming Luke in the papers in relation to black magic, 'the violent world of gothic sub-culture' rituals and Satanism as early as 6th July.
Appointing an FLO while LM was being treated as a suspect.
Having advice from a criminal psychologist that Luke may self harm or reoffend in line with goth culture then releasing him with no protection in place for himself or the public.
Searching the house with the specific goal of finding Marilyn Manson related items.
Telling the press that the moped boys had been cleared of any involvement before any kind of forensic analysis had came back to definitively clear them.
Here's some further reading that highlights just some of the failures in this case.
From the Scotsman in 2005
But today as Mitchell was found guilty, Lothian and Borders Police’s hunch was proved right, although there was severe criticism of their handling of the investigation during the case.
There was no murder weapon, no blood covered clothes - despite the gruesome nature of the murder - and no damning DNA find.
There was not even convincing eye-witness testimony.
The trial heard that Jodi’s body was left uncovered and exposed to the elements for eight hours after it was first discovered, possibly risking the destruction of vital DNA evidence.
The schoolgirl’s body and items around it had been moved before the forensic team started work.
Even though the knife used to murder Jodi had not been found, the bins in the area were allowed to be emptied before a thorough search could be carried out.
The way police carried out a virtual identity parade, presenting photographs of Luke and other youths to one witness, was also criticised during the trial at the High Court in Edinburgh.
A string of incidents were highlighted by Mitchell’s defence lawyer Donald Findlay, QC, during the 42-day trial.
In one blistering courtroom attack, Mr Findlay described the behaviour of detectives as "a disgrace".
The court heard that the first forensic scientist to examine the crime scene arrived more than eight hours after Jodi's body was found. Not only had her body been left uncovered overnight in the rain, but it had also been moved and items around it moved before Derek Scrimger arrived at the scene.
Under questioning from Mr Findlay, Mr Scrimger was forced to admit that it was "not an ideally managed crime scene from the very start".
The forensic scientist said he believed that a tent should have been erected over the scene.
Mr Scrimger’s work was further delayed because an earlier female colleague had arrived at the scene, but could not get over the wall to get to the body because she had a bad back.
The jury also heard that a pioneering lab using the most sensitive DNA test in Britain failed to identify Mitchell as the
It also emerged that detectives probing the murder broke normal guidelines by not putting Mitchell on an ID parade.
Mr Findlay claimed "a tactical decision" had been taken not to treat the boy fairly.
From <https://www.scotsman.com/news/clues-snared-murderer-2470415>
From the 2008 appeal
[139] Counsel then proceeded to draw our attention to the transcript of the interview, from page 14 onwards. An example of the outrageous questioning conducted by the police interviewers was to be found at page 20 of the transcript. In the lengthy question on that page, numerous points had been put in a conflated manner, without the interviewer waiting for the suspect to give an answer. The inference was that the interviewer had not actually been interested in obtaining an answer to the various points in the question, but had rather been putting pressure upon the suspect, with a view to extracting some admission of significance from him. Similar questioning occurred at pages 21 and 22. At page 17, the suspect had, following a barrage of questions to which the questioner had not awaited any answer, conceded that his mother and brother had had a fire on the night of 30 June 2003 in the log burner in the back garden of the house where the suspect lived. At page 21 the suspect had, following multiple assertions by the questioner of knife-carrying by the suspect, agreed that a knife shown to him, Crown label production 301, was his fishing knife. More questioning of an unfair nature was to be found at page 25 of the transcript. At page 27 a further composite question was put making very serious allegations to the suspect. Much of the questioning was of a repetitive nature. At pages 28 to 29 there was more questioning of a bullying and badgering nature .
It was submitted that the police questioning was quite plainly a deliberate pre-planned attempt to provoke the appellant, which, it was hoped, would result in him incriminating himself. There could be no other explanation for the character of the questioning. It was evident from some of the appellant's answers that he had been riled and provoked by the police questioning into giving coarse and abusive answers to them, which might be thought to reflect badly upon him. In the course of some passages, police officers had put to the appellant suggestions that were not in fact vouched by any evidence in their possession.
An example of that was to be found at the bottom of page 40 of the transcript. The questioning at page 45 of the transcript concerning the finding of the body of the deceased was grotesquely unfair. That and the material at page 46 was crucial to the Crown's case and had been used by them. The Crown had also made use of the passage between pages 63 to 65 of the transcript, concerning the actions of the appellant after the deceased had not appeared for the meeting that he had contemplated would take place.
That had been preceded by more bullying questioning at pages 47 to 48 of the transcript. Passages at pages 53 and 55 demonstrated that the police had, quite simply, not been interested in receiving answers to their express questions; the questions were put in a bullying and overbearing manner, with the view to endeavouring to extracting damaging admissions from the appellant. On page 61 more inaccurate propositions had been put to the appellant. At page 70 there was a passage relating to the appellant's call to the speaking clock, upon which the Crown relied.
At page 65 of the transcript, the interview had reached a stage when Detective Sergeant David Gordon had entered the room. There followed what might be called the "good cop, bad cop" routine. That was quite simply a trick designed to extract an admission from the appellant. Associated with the arrival of Detective Sergeant Gordon the questioning had moved on to the alleged sexual satisfaction which the appellant might have enjoyed from killing the deceased.
[141] In elaborating his submission that the trial judge's decision to admit the parts of the interview objected to in evidence was wrong, counsel referred to Lord Advocate's Reference (No. 1 of 1983) 1984 J.C. 52. What had been said in that decision at page 58 could have been devised with this particular interview in mind. The police in the present case had fallen far short of all that was required of them. There had been unfairness, cross-examination, pressure, deception, or at least carelessness in questioning, and bullying. The police had plainly embarked upon a campaign to try to force a confession from the appellant. The trial judge had failed to recognise that state of affairs.
The appellant was on 14 August 2003 interviewed under caution by police officers. In the course of the trial the Crown sought to lead before the jury evidence of some but only a few of the questions and answers put and given in the course of that interview. Objection was taken on behalf of the appellant to that course of action but the objection was repelled by the trial judge. The challenge was renewed on appeal, it being maintained that the interview was conducted in circumstances which were wholly and manifestly unfair to the appellant. Having considered the transcript of the interview, we are driven to the conclusion that some of the questions put by the interviewing police officer can only be described as outrageous. At times the nature of the questioning was such that the questioner did not seem to be seriously interested in a response from the appellant but rather endeavouring to break him down into giving some hoped-for confession by his overbearing and hostile interrogation. Such conduct, particularly where the interviewee was a 15 year old youth, can only be deplored.
[152] Turning then to the decision of the trial judge, recorded in paragraph [168] of his report, it is to be noted that, although the appellant was but 15 years of age at the time of the interview, there was present at it, apart from the police officers involved, a senior social worker from the Dalkeith Social Work Department, who was there as a responsible adult, it being inappropriate that the appellant's mother should undertake that responsibility. Before coming to consider, so far as necessary, the details of the interview, it is appropriate to make some general observations. In that part of it which was objected to, commencing at page 12 of Crown production 44, undoubtedly some of the questions put by the police officers can only be described as outrageous. One of the clearest examples of what we mean is to be found at page 55 of the transcript. There, D.C.2, having shown to the suspect a video of the murder scene and having elicited from him certain answers, poses what purports to be a question as follows:
"You say you recognise it as Jodi and you say you can see that it had throat and you said you could see it was completely naked. Now what's nonsense cause you've just watched that and you cannae tell that, you say you can see you barely see something there. What you've said you're a liar, you're a liar. Everything you've been constantly lying to us all the way through this interview. You've lied to us about using cannabis - you use cannabis all the time, we've had loads of people tell us you use cannabis three times as much as anybody else would. You buy. We know who you buy the cannabis from, do you think we've no done an enquiry blah blah blah blah blah. We know who you bought the cannabis from, we know the amounts he sells it to you, we know the people that you sell it to a day after, we know that. You've lied about that, you've lied about all these knives, you say well I dinnae have these knives there's, as I say, 45 people telling us you had knives, you, are they all lying as well? These, the three people down the path, Alice, Steven and Janine, are they lying as well? That video reconstruction there shows that you could not have seen Jodi and recognise it as Jodi."
It will be seen from this purported question that, quite apart from its incoherence, the questioning officer sought to obtain a response on a range of disparate points. Yet, the appellant was given no opportunity to deal with each point as it was raised. Indeed, it is apparent to us from the nature of the questioning that the questioner did not seem to be seriously interested in the responses that separate parts of the question might evoke. One is driven to suppose that what was happening when questions, such as that quoted, were asked was that the questioning police officer was endeavouring to break the appellant down into giving some hoped-for confession by his overbearing and hostile interrogation. Examination of the parts of the interview objected to shows that the interviewing police officers asked a number of similar questions. We are driven to conclude that their purpose was as we have described.
From <https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/search-judgments/judgment?id=e2988aa6-8980-69d2-b500-ff0000d74aa7>
I WAS investigations editor with The Herald newspapers at the time of the Jodi Jones murder, and I appear as a interviewee in the documentary Murder In A Small Town. In the run-up to the Mitchell trial I received a very strange phone call from a senior police officer in which I was told a number of unsubstantiated and shocking claims about Mitchell.
I was told Mitchell was definitely guilty. In all my years as a reporter –covering some of the most serious crimes in recent British criminal history, including major terrorist offences – I’ve never received such a phone call from police. A lot of the telephone conversation centred on Mitchell’s love of Goth music and his alternative lifestyle.
At the time, there was a moral panic around teenagers listening to music their parents found disagreeable. I wondered at the time if part of the Mitchell case was “the prosecution of a lifestyle”.
As a reporter, I later visited Mitchell in jail, and spoke with his mother. To this day, due to the circumstantial nature of the case, I cannot say whether I know for sure if Mitchell is guilty or innocent.
This I am sure of, though: if Mitchell did kill Jodi Jones then he deserves all he got for one of the most appalling crimes to ever take place in Scotland; however, if he didn’t, then not only is a monstrous killer still at large, but society did something terrible to a 15-year-old boy back in 2005.
From <https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19106402.murder-small-town-luke-mitchell-innocent-murder-jodi-jones/>
