Frank & Fearless by Nicholas Cowdery

Author:Nicholas Cowdery
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742244617
Publisher: NewSouth Publishing

Chapter 12

ONE BROTHER, TWO MURDER TRIALS: THE GILHAM CASE RETURNS

Expert opinion evidence plays an increasingly significant role in the criminal justice process, particularly with the development in recent years of DNA evidence and other scientific advances in many areas.

I think expert opinion evidence can be extremely valuable in the search for the truth, but there’s a risk of the opinions of experts being simply accepted as fact, which is not right. During a trial, the expert witness gives an opinion based on certain facts (proven or assumed) that is taken into account with all of the facts and other opinions that need to be considered. An expert does not determine the issue, but can be very influential. It is therefore important that experts be properly qualified in particular fields of learning and give evidence within their own areas of expertise.

In late November 2008, Jeffrey Gilham was found guilty of the murder of his parents. Expert evidence played a large role in the two trials that led to his conviction.

Fifteen years had passed since Jeffrey’s neighbours had answered a knock on the door to find Jeffrey, wearing only boxer shorts, saying his family was dead and his house was on fire. In 2001, when I first considered the possibility of putting Jeffrey on trial, the whereabouts of the glasses Jeffrey’s dead brother Christopher needed to see beyond an arm’s length were unknown. Since then, they had been located in the downstairs bathroom near Christopher’s bedroom, where his body was found, and had remained in the custody of police. However, since Jeffrey’s guilty plea to the manslaughter of Christopher 13 years earlier, other major pieces of evidence had gone missing and were no longer available for DNA testing, which had improved markedly since the time of the deaths.

These missing pieces of hard evidence underlined the fundamental problem at the heart of this case – a real life horror with no obvious way of discovering beyond reasonable doubt which brother was the murderer.

It was this lack of definitive, hard evidence that had led me to shut down the attempts by Jeffrey’s uncle Tony to have Jeffrey tried for murder in 2001. Tony continued to push for a closer examination of Jeffrey’s claim that Christopher was the murderer. That closer examination could only be done by experts.

Expert opinion evidence helps juries and judges to interpret a crime scene and to see if the evidence of the facts has anything more to reveal about the crime. For someone to be accepted as an expert in a court of law, able to express opinions in evidence, they have to show appropriate qualifications and practical experience in a specialised area. This requirement takes forensic experts to places few would otherwise willingly go. Dr Lawrence, who performed all three autopsies of Jeffrey’s family, was also an expert on gunshot wounds and their comparison.

The similarity of the stab wounds inflicted on both of Jeffrey’s parents and, as Jeffrey openly admitted, inflicted on Christopher by his own hand, featured prominently in the renewed police investigation that his uncle Tony had campaigned for.

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