In Feb 2011 Giovanni Di Stefano, Jeremy Bamber's then lawyer, admitted 'Nothing really substantively new' had been presented to the CCRC for Jeremy's CCRC application. As such and according to the CCRC guidelines for referral it would appear even Jeremy's lawyer at the time of submision was not surprised at the result of the initial provisional decision.
Since Feb 2011 Giovanni Di Stefano has been charged and recently convicted on a number of counts of fraud and deception. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Giovanni Di Stefano had been successful in historically masterminding the overturning of a number of high profile convictions. Primarily, the overturning of these convictions appear to have been based on identifying some failures in the following of correct due process as opposed to any uncovering or presentation of new
evidence.
Since Feb 2011 the CCRC had allowed Jeremy extended time to respond to their provisional decision whilst also allowing the submission of additional content for consideration - Pig skin burn marks etc.
Given Di Stefano's historical successes in exploiting failures in due process and his Feb 2011 admission that nothing substantially new was presented to the CCRC on behalf of Jeremy then maybe time is slowly revealing the CCRC were very lenient in giving Jeremy Bamber the benefit of the doubt when considering his application to refer the case to the Court of Appeal.
Maybe there is no surprise the failure of Jeremy's CCRC submission was eventually followed by failure in the Judicial Review to overturn the CCRC decision.
Hi Curiousessex
My personal view, for what it's worth, is that Jeremy was badly let down at trial. Geoffrey Rivlin QC chose to go down the route of the silencer being used and returned to the gun cupboard before Sheila shot herself
. This, in my humble opinion, was a fatal mistake. I believe the jury should have been presented with the more likely scenario of the silencer not being used in the tragedy and having been contaminated, either innocently or deliberately. The jury then were misled into thinking that the blood in the silencer was a "perfect match" for Sheila's. They were unaware that the blood type/group found in the silencer matched RB's and around 10% of the population. No audit trail exists from manufacture to FSS. This exhibit would never get near a court today.
Also nothing was made of the freakish stats re the Bamber family ie June mental illness '59 and '82 requiring in-patient psychiatric care. And the same for Sheila '83 and '85. If Jeremy is guilty then imo he must also have been mentally ill/personality disordered. 3/4 members of an adoptive family, ie no genetic component, mentally ill or personality disordered? Statistically unlikely.
As I'm sure you know once a jury return a verdict it is then very, very challenging to overturn. However I remain optimistic that if Jeremy is innocent, as I believe him to be, then justice will eventually be served. Society is far less deferential now than in '86. And this along with the internet ie exchange of information, will I believe pave the way for justice.
There is very liitle information on the internet regarding Geoffrey Rivlin. Perhaps due to him more recently being a judge? However, there's lots about the late Edmund Lawson who I am sure was extremely able despite getting lost en route from Jeremy's trial to the shooting range and missing the opportunity to observe the jurors' questions, responses etc.
I'll add a link later which shows that Mr Lawson is described by his peers in glowing terms "Can turn water to wine", analogies with rock stars, humourous, intelligent etc, etc. I've no doubt this is true but I would prefer to see something measurable eg his success rate compared with peers. A low % of cases referred to ccrc, CoA, miscarriage of justices. It strikes me that QC's and judges are completely unaccountable. A flick through one of the directories and you will see they all big one another up. As far as I'm aware nothing exists that is measurable.
Are QC's monitored? Heart surgeons are now measured against patient outcome? Teachers are monitored against pupil attainment. Investment fund managers are measured against investment returns and peer group etc, etc.
Are verdicts that are not unanimous indicative of potential miscarriages of justice?
