I think the appeal court can sort itself out, but if it can't, then it's up to the House of Lords or Europe, or the government. The 1995 appeal act will need to be amended, so that the role of the appeal court is clarified." The prosecution asserted that Michelle's motive for the murder was clearly indicated by her diary writings. Michelle claimed that the affair between her and John had ended months prior, but John discredited this when he revealed that they had sex as recently as three weeks before the murder. [1] Michelle also admitted at trial that she felt jealous of Alison and that she still loved John, despite the affair "dying". [16] [17] John and Alison's imminent move to Ireland, the Crown argued, meant that Michelle realised that she only had a short amount of time left to act to try and claim John for herself. [1] Michelle later said that she had previously "prayed" that John would call off his wedding to Alison in Ireland. [9] The final straw may have been, alleged the prosecution, when John told Michelle only days before the murder that he was planning to give up the flower arranging sessions he did with her every Monday, which was the only time they had together and when they invariably had sex. [18] [6] This had led to Michelle killing Alison in a "last despairing act", it was suggested. [19] One of those who initially campaigned for the Taylors' release, Bernard O'Mahoney, later admitted he had intimidated witnesses to build up the defence case. [25] No doubt these cases will be heard again at appeal in due course. Yet will the chances of success improve? There is a gathering perception that the appeal court has not come to terms with the growth of prosecution power, and that there are now more wrongful convictions, fewer of which are being rectified at the court of appeal. "I have lost faith in the court's ability and willingness to rectify miscarriages of justice", said Erzinçlioglu. The social worker explained that he had often seen Derek Williams sleeping rough around the Strand and that more recently he had come across him in a squat in Battersea. The police officer instantly saw a significance in this: two days earlier, a 21-year-old woman named Alison Shaughnessy had been found stabbed to death in the hallway of her flat in Vardens Road, Battersea. He started to push the social worker for more information.

Lisa is not so sure, not so confident of her abilities. “I just know I’ll never trust anyone again, especially not anyone in authority. I’m stronger now. I used to be all passive and weak but I wouldn’t let it happen again. I’d know better if it ever happened again.”A former psychiatric nurse from Charminster, Dorset, was sentenced at the Old Bailey to nine concurrent terms of life imprisonment on 10 February 1994 for the kidnap, rape and attempted rape of a number of disabled women. He was also charged with the kidnap of Ramsden; however, due to insufficient evidence, the case was dismissed at a pre-trial hearing. [67] In the summer of 1987, when she was 16, Michelle got her first job, as a clerk in the accounts department of a private health clinic in Lambeth Road, south London. There she met and eventually fell for one of the gardeners, a good-looking young Irishman called John Shaughnessy, ten years her senior and a full-time flirt. They were together for most of 1989 and there were times when Michelle felt she really loved him but, in September of that year, he took her out to a Harvester restaurant and told her that he had been seeing someone else, a bank clerk called Alison, whom he wanted to marry. Michelle walked out and refused to speak to him for months. a b c d Fergus, Lindsay (3 February 2002). "ALISON WAS STABBED, BUT I LOST MY LIFE TOO; Woman cleared of Irish murder tells of her pain". The People . Retrieved 20 July 2022.

That was June 5 1991. The next day, the social worker spoke to a colleague whose wife, it turned out, had been threatened by Derek Williams. They agreed that he was an unstable character with some unpleasant obsessions about women. They also discovered that apart from sleeping rough in the Strand, where Alison Shaughnessy worked, he also drank in a pub in Clapham which she had often used. For all they knew, he had been following her for weeks. They called the police again to share their suspicions. Michelle is still angry at the way that Fleet Street lynched her. “It was such crap. We couldn’t believe what they were doing but we never thought it would make a difference. When they found us guilty, I just went blank. I felt empty.” For even if it is clear that the existing law was shamelessly broken by the tabloids in the Taylor case, it is possible that the law itself is wrong – that, in truth, the press has very little effect on the way that jurors behave. And while the Attorney General has a clear duty to enforce the law against everyone, including the Government’s allies, it may be that in the longer term, all newspapers would have a reasonable case for arguing that the law itself should be removed. DNA profiling and the case that started it all". The Times. London. 21 June 2006. Archived from the original on 24 May 2011 . Retrieved 22 May 2010. The court said that the DNA was somehow more scientific and overrode the fingerprint, which is really a ridiculous observation," explained Dr Zakaria Erzinçlioglu, former director of the forensic science research centre at the University of Durham. "You have to touch something to leave your fingerprint; you don't have to touch something to leave your DNA, especially when there's a severed artery and blood spurting all over the place."Brent E. Turvey: Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis Academic Press 2002, ISBN 978-0-12-705041-6. Defence lawyers argued at the time that this case demonstrated how the collusion of the press and the prosecution lead to inaccurate, incomplete and sensationalist journalism. Headlines give prominence and weight to the Crown's case without question, but largely ignore or minimise the defence, they then disappear until the verdict, and then descend "like vultures". Many newspapers don't even attend the trials and merely regurgitate press releases. It was said that the media was as much to blame as the police in this leading to a miscarriage of justice. The newspapers stance was a defensive one, where they refuted these claims. The Sun newspaper issued a statement in defence of their coverage of the Taylor sisters murder trial: "Lord Justice McCowan accuses us of sensational reporting. He overlooks the fact that this was a sensational case: a murder trial of two sisters that involved adultery and a hate-filled diary." [41] [42] In popular culture [ edit ]