Forensic Expert Reports

In 2011 the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) gave a provisional refusal to Jeremy Bamber's application. The submission itself was supported by three forensic reports one of which is linked below.

At the trial the prosecution claimed that red paint came to be embedded on a sound moderator during a fight between Nevill and Jeremy in the kitchen at White House Farm. The only photographs of this scratch were taken on the 12th of September 1985, some five weeks after the original crime scene photographs. Curiously, the original scene photographs disclosed don't show the area in question which is underneath the mantle shelf. This contention suggests that the scratches were fabricated evidence created to implicated Jeremy Bamber.

To support this contention Peter Sutherst argued in a forensic report that the area where scratch marks were present could be seen in one of the photographs taken on the 7th of August, and that there were not scratch marks present in this photograph. Peter Sutherst was only allowed to examine the photographs at the CCRC's offices and was not given full access at his lab as he requested.

The CCRC initially stated to the defence that Sutherst was their preferred expert and therefore they would not hire another forensic expert to test the validity of his findings. They renaged on this and hired a leading forensic firm to refute this report and argue that the area where the scratches were made could not be seen in the photographs taken on the 7th of August 1985. They sent the case photographs in negative form by courier to LGC forensics lab for examination, and thus giving their expert advantage over Sutherst who worked without the specialist equipment at his own lab.

The defence still refutes LGC forensics contention that scratches cannot be seen owing to miscalculation of the location of the point of where the scratch marks would have been present on the images. The integrity of the CCRC has to be brought into question regarding the full disclosure of negatives outside of their offices. Forensic reports are costly and funding for reports like Sutherst's is difficult to find. From the outset the CCRC had put the defence's forensics at a disadvantage.