Just catching up using a friend's internet connection (mine's still out!)
Re the jury discussion, as others have pointed out, juries are required to come to their decisions based on the information before them. As I see it, there are a number of problems with that.
Firstly, all of the evidence before them is not all of the evidence that could have been before them - pieces of information are selected and shaped for their legal utility, not necessarily for the weight they might lend to the truth of matters.
Take Sean toal's case, for example - the murder weapon was excluded, by experts, as the murder weapon at trial. Other evidence linking the victim and someone who was not Sean was not disclosed due to an "oversight" - there, staight away, are two pieces of "evidence" which were not before the jury. Obviously, jurors can't make decisions based on stuff they've never heard or seen.
By "legal utility" of evidence, I mean evidence which is selected because it fits with the internal logic of the legal case - in this case, the prosecution had to prove that the murder was linked, by "strong enough" evidence to convince the jury, to Sean Toal and a knife. By removing the other possibilities, the only information left was the presence of Sean at the scene, the admission that he had fought with the victim, and the presence of a knife - the jury was not told that the knife that was left in the equation was not forensically linked to the murder.
Next, there's the "spin" put on evidence, especially expert evidence, which is (in my opinion) designed not only to confuse jurors, but to lead them in particular directions, even though the actual evidence itself doesn't support such directions - Simon Hall and John Taft were both convicted on the basis of fibre evidence, which was presented to the juries in terms of "microscopically indistinguishable." It wasn't explained to either jury that the term is actually prety meaningless - the fibres may have been "microscopically indistinguishable" to items of clothing claimed to have belonged to Simon or John (although, bizarrely, in both cases, they couldn't actually come up with items of clothing belonging to either man which shed the same fibres), but the same would be true of any item of clothing, belonging to any person, which shed the same fibres.
Then there's the ultra confusing directions to the jury - I've sometimes had to read and re-read judges directions several times to figure out exactly what it is the jury is being told - the jury only gets that once, orally, but are then assumed to have both understood and applied what they have been told.
It's too simplistic (and pretty unfair, in my opinion) to suggest that jurors are too lazy, dim or disinterested to properly assess the information before them.
Back to the April Jones situation - the other abduction is extremely worrying. Coming to the conlusion that the two abductions are "not related" (especially when, if I remember correctly, there was a similar attempted abduction just before April disappeared) would seem, at the very least, premature, and can only be on the basis that they have MB in custody - they can't be related via him would be a more truthful conclusion, imo. But, of course, if MB did not abduct April, then of course it's possible that this other attempted abduction is related, as could the previous attempt have been.
There are so many concerns in this case, it's difficult to list them all, but, like others on here, I have real reservations about the way the whole thing played out - the changing vehicle colour (and description), the focus on such a small search area (for a vehicle related abduction, that seemed absurd to me), the instant focus on one person, and apparently one person only... I sincerely hope April is found soon, for her family's sake - the not knowing must be horrific.
