For April.
518. To decide whether we considered that the interests of justice required that we heard Mr Ismail's evidence, we first had regard to the evidence that it was said that he could give. From the blood staining he concluded that following the second and fatal shot Sheila Caffell was lying almost flat on her back with her head propped against a bedside cabinet. For her then to slide to be found in the position depicted in the photographs would have required the downward force to be greater than the friction of her body against the floor. In his opinion this simply was not possible as there would only be the weight of the head providing the downward force. Therefore he concluded that an additional force would have been necessary. It could not have come from Sheila Caffell since the second shot would have been instantly fatal and thus she must have been moved by someone else, for example with her legs being pulled. He also considered that the weight and the friction between her skin and her nightdress was likely to have been less than the weight and friction between the nightdress and the carpet. Therefore, he would expect movement of the body within the nightdress rather than the body and clothing sliding together across the carpet. He pointed out that the photographs demonstrated this effect at the back of the nightdress with the nightdress staying rucked up in its original position. However the front of the nightdress had not demonstrated this effect. Accordingly Mr Ismail concluded that the nightdress had been pulled down after Sheila Caffell slid into her final position. Since on the evidence, she was dead by this stage, Mr Ismail concluded that some one else had arranged her nightdress.
519. Having studied with care the statement of Mr Ismail, we concluded that this was expert evidence capable of belief. Indeed if it had been given and if cross-examination had not revealed flaws in it (which we consider unlikely bearing in mind that there was no application to call any expert evidence to contradict it), had we been on a jury hearing such evidence we might well have been very impressed by it. That evidence in itself could have led to a conclusion of guilt quite apart from the many other matters relied upon by the prosecution at trial. However, we were not satisfied that evidence of this kind was not available at the date of trial if the prosecution had sought to explore these matters and more importantly we thought that Mr Turner was right in his submission that it was very difficult to gauge with sufficient certainty the reaction of a jury to it particularly when we could not judge it against all the related evidence in the trial, which we had not heard.
520. Our conclusion was that we should not therefore admit the evidence and we have had no regard to it in reaching our conclusion. It can, however, be said about it that if it had been called at trial, it may well have represented yet another formidable string to the prosecution's bow in a case where even without any regard to that evidence, it has to be said that the prosecution were able to put forward a very strong case pointing to guilt.
