You have a very short memory Sandra.
Interesting claim, since I'm doing all of this from memory.
The evidence in relation to events which played out in the family home was introduced to show that Luke was a boy out of control.
Which events were those? Luke making the family dinner 4 evenings a week? Helping out with the family business?
A one parent household with an absent father
And? Anyay, Luke's father wasn't "absent" - Luke spent every weekend with him. You may have forgotten that Jodi, too, was part of a one parent family - best be careful what inferences you imply about one parent families, I think.
where the youngest son dictated to his mother rather than the other way round.
Not according to Jodi and Judith. The evidence shows that Judith had threatened to tell Luke's mother about something he and Jodi had done that they houldn't have, and Jodi begged her not to because of how strict Luke's mum was. Judith told the police that Jodi and Luke didn't normally meet until around 6pm because Luke "had to" cook the dinner because his mother and brother worked.
A 14-year-old child who was allowed to set up a cannabis factory in his bedroom
Now you're just being silly.
and was allowed freedoms above and beyond his age.
Careful again - Jodi was allowed to smoke cannabis, and have underage sex - her mother knew about both. Are you suggesting Jodi was also "out of control?" What's being described here are a couple of ordinary teenagers, doing things that ordinary teenagers do - you might not approve, I might not approve, but it won't change the fact that that's what teenagers do, and it certainly doesn't suggest they're all "out of control." Remember, Luke was doing well in school, getting good marks in all of his classes - not really "out of control" at all, was he?
A child who was effectively left to do anything he wanted with little or no parental intervention. A child who did not understand right from wrong and was seldom disciplined, this was an important part of the evidence against Luke and the jury accepted it.
See above - there was
no substantiated evidence of any of this - it was merely suggestion and conjecture. A child who did not understand right from wrong, and a mother who didn't give a damn what he got up to would not have arranged to extend his curfew time to allow him to see Jodi safely home of an evening would they? (That
is in the evidence, from both sides.)
Your innocent explanation excuse just doesn't cut any ice. You are still making excuses for Luke Mitchell, apparently you haven't yet learned a lesson from the Prout and Hall cases?
Why would I do that? I had two girls just about Jodi's age, living in exactly the area the murder happened, going to school 500 yards from where the body was found. For the record, I was never "involved" in the Adrian Prout case - I discussed it, on the basis of available information, online with others, that was the extent of my "involvement." I do not regret my involvement in the Simon Hall case.
Luke Mitchell has no alibi for the period of time when Jodi was murdered. His own brother disputed his claim that he was at home
Neither do Joseph Jones, or Steven Kelly, or Ferris and Dickie, on the same basis you make this claim. Someone made a phone call from Luke's home landline to Scotts caravans during this period - we know where his mother, brother, grandmother and father were, so who do you suppose made that call? His brother did not "dispute" Luke's whereabouts initially, as I've explained elsewhere. Mother and brother both ate dinner when mother came in from work - who do you suppose cooked the dinner they ate, or did it somehow make itself?
He was seen by two independent witnesses who described his clothing exactly while he was lurking a matter of yards from the murder scene just minutes after it occurred.
That'll be the dark haired, tall/ medium height youth wearing jeans and trainers with a jacket they couldn't say whether or not it was zipped up but could later read the writing on the t shirt underneath. Oh, yes, that'll be the description given
after Luke's pictures appeared in the papers, and the whole area was awash with rumour that Luke was the killer. Those will be the "independent" witnesses who originally claimed to have seen the youth nearer to 6pm close to the entrance to Newbattle Abbey College, and not "near the entrance to the path," the independent witnesses whose statements begin "I have been shown a newspaper article (by police)... and asked..."
Now you tell me Sandra, on a section of main road with few pedestrians, what are the chances of two male youths wearing exactly the same clothes being in the same quiet spot at exactly the same time?
No idea, but it's irrelevant, because their descriptions (one from a fleeting glance in a rearview mirror) were originally nothing like Luke on the evening in question, the timings were changed, the location of the sighting was changed - what are the chances this "evidence" was shoehorned (badly, as it turned out) to fit a particular agenda? And, for the record, in the summer, it's not an area with "few pedestrians" - granted, it's not a busy town street, but neither is it a deserted pathway.
