The Construction of Guilt on Timothy Evans and 10 Rillington Place - Essay Example

The Construction of Guilt on Timothy Evans and 10 Rillington Place Introduction This is the case of a young man of 25 years who voluntarily confessed to murdering his wife and was hanged in a matter of few month of his confession though he retracted it and pointed to his co-tenant as the murderer who was ironically made the principal prosecution witness leading to the young man’s execution. The facts and circumstances suggest the young man Timothy Evans’ was the case of miscarried justice as the very prosecution witness whom Timothy Evan named as the murderer was later found to have been a serial killer with Timothy Evans’ wife as one of his victims. Brief facts of the case Timothy Evans, an illiterate but an able driver with mental instability made an unprovoked visit to Merthyr Police Station on 30 November 1949 and voluntarily confessed to having disposed of his wife’s body down a drain outside his home at 10 Rillington Place, North London. He made two revelations: 1) that his pregnant wife died after he administered to her abortion pills he had collected from a stranger in a cafe in East Anglia. The Notting Hills Police in North London who rushed to Evan’s place did not find any dead body inside the drain manhole cover of which was so heavy that it had to be lifted by three police men with great difficulty. 2) On further interrogation, Evans informed that his landlord/co-tenant , Christie disposed of the dead body of his wife who died after an unsuccessful abortion on her performed by Christie himself as allegedly informed by Christie to Evans who was not an eyewitness to both the abortion incident as well as the disposal of the body. Contrary to this, Christie actually strangled both Evan’s wife and his baby daughter to death three weeks earlier to his (Evans’) confession, of which Evans had no knowledge. However, during a subsequent search at Evans’ place, police discovered the bodies of his wife and the baby in a wash-house. Evans, after further interrogation, made two detailed statements on Dec 2 and 3 confessing to the murder of both of them by himself. He confessed the same to the Principal Medical Officer of Brixton Prison on being remanded to judicial custody by a Magistrate court. (Gudjonsson, 2003) Evans later retracted his confession after his mother met with him at the prison and asked him for the reason to commit the murders. He told his mother “Christie done it. Ask him to come and see me. He is the only one who can help me now” (Kennedy, 1988 p.141). Unfortunately, prosecution managed to fix Christies and his wife as its witnesses to give evidence against Evans. at the trial. Although Evans’ defence was that he did not murder them but Christie, his own defence lawyers considered his second statement in Wales as reliable. At the time it was not suspected that Christie lied that Evans’ wife died due to abortion. Evans’ second statement precluded any motive on the part of Christie to the murder of Evans’ wife. Although the medical evidence proved that Mrs Evans had been sexually penetrated after her death, defence did not have the hunch that why there could not have been a third party involvement in the rape for a husband need not have to rape or to have normal sexual intercourse after her after death. Further, the forensic report of the presence of spermatozoa in Mrs Evan’s vagina did not prompt the Defense to have it tested for DNA to find its owner was whether Evans, Christie or anybody else. Bereft of any evidence in his favour, Evans was found guilty of the murder of his daughter by the jury which was not asked by court to decide on Mrs Evans’ death. As such, Evans was sentenced to death for is murder of his daughter and executed on 9 March 1950 in spite of his persistence about his innocence till the end. It later came to be known that Christie had actually murdered two other women by strangulation probably after raping them by luring them to his home, three or four years before the murders of Evans’ wife and daughter. It was only after the death of three more women, Christie was apprehended by the end of March 1953. He confessed to the killing of seven women including Mrs Evans. His denial of the murdering of Evans’ daughter was explained by Kennedy as his avoidance to the cause of sending an innocent man to be sentenced to death and also for want of a plausible reason to kill a baby unlike in the case of others. Christie was found guilty and was hanged on 15 July 1953. (Gudjonsson, 2003). Following are the reasons given by Kennedy for Evans’ wrongful conviction. 1) Evans failed to report the death of his wife to the police when he found her body at home on his return from work. 2) Police did not give credence to the evidence of the workman which belied the confessions of Evans and police blindly relied on his confessions. The police also deliberately suppressed the workman’s evidence from the defence lawyers. An important time-sheet also was believed destroyed by the police as it was missing. 3) The defence lawyers also believed in Evans’ guilt and failed to make use of evidences for his innocence. 4) The trial judge’s summary was biased. 5) The incriminating evidence of Christie against Evans. That he was a man of good intellect and a former police constable but Evans was a man of low intellect with an IQ of less than75 and a pathological liar. This easily misled Jury to favour Christie and not Evans. (Gudjonsson, 2003) Kennedy exposes the discrepancy between the police and Evans in the timing of the two statements made. While Police claimed that Evans’ confession was spontaneous and voluntary, Evans claimed that he was kept for hours in the night for two days and was forced to confess. The vocabulary and phraseology of the confession matched with the education of the Police officers and not with that of the uneducated and illiterate Evans. Svartvick (1968) ‘s analysis of Evans confession concluded that linguistic features of Evans’ confessions agreed with that of Kennedy. Kennedy also points out the circumstances and manner in which Evans confession was extracted. Evans had been under considerable stress at the time of his confession to the police which was self-induced. Confused as to what had happened, he went to the police station for help. But he was arrested and kept in solitary confinement before confession was taken. Whilst in custody, police kept him in the dark as to what had been happening outside. Evans only knew of his wife’s body not being found in the drain as he had believed it to be. At the Notting Hill police station, he was shown only his wife’s and daughter’s clothing and a ligature that was used for killing of his daughter. Evans had already been depressed and been feeling guilty that he could not do more to prevent their deaths. He appeared more guilty and shocked at the murder of his daughter also. (Gudjonsson, 2003). Kennedy says that Evans underwent a period of conversion which made him believe that he committed the murders. It is argued that Kennedy’s observation is highly ‘speculative and weak’ since his theory of Evans’ internalisation is based on Sargant;s (1957) book Battle for the mind which gives the account of interrogations among the Chinese communists without being able to distinguish between the coerced and compliant type of false confession. Evans’ confession was rather a coerced-compliant type but there is no record of Evans’ beliefs at the time of interrogation. According to McKenzie (1989), had there been Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 at the time, it would have prevented miscarriage of justice in Evans’ case since it would have given Evans more legal protection but that could not have been a guarantee against conviction. There were two official enquiries after Christie’s confession about Mrs Evans’ murder. The one conducted in 1953 by Mr J Scott Henderson QC concluded that there was no miscarriage of justice in Evans’ conviction since evidence against Evans was overwhelming Christie’s confession about Mrs Evans murder by himself was also rejected. House of Commons called it as ill-founded conclusions (Kennedy, 1988). The second one was conducted in 1965-1966 by Sir Daniel Brabin who was a High Court Judge (Brabin, 1966). His conclusion was the he did not kill his daughter but his wife and his conviction was wrong as for murdering his daughter. However, in 1966 sixteen years after Evans execution, Queen granted pardon for Evans as recommended by the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins thus recognizing Evans’ innocence (Gudjonsson, 2003). False confession The only evidence the police relied on for Evans’ conviction was his confession voluntarily made which he later retracted. The false confession made by him could be due to coercion. It happens when police officers strongly but wrongly believe in suspect’s guilt by their blind faith in non-verbal signs as a tool for detecting deception. False confession can happen without coercion or police impropriety. However, false confession is likely when pressure from the police is great. Although Inbau et al (2001) insists on the veracity of police’s strong and blind faith in their ability to detect deception, empirical evidence shows that non-verbal signs are unreliable indicators of deception (Ekman 1992; Kassin; & Fong 1999; Vrij, 2000, 2001). Micro-momentary facial expressions of emotions, however, are found to be a positive a feature of deception. (Frank & Ekman, 1997, Stubbs & Newberry 1998). Leo (1994) cites four most successful interrogation tactics out of some 12 in practice used by the American police. The most successful ones (success rate mentioned in parenthesis) are 1) Appeal to suspect’s conscience (97%), 2) Identify contradictions in suspect’s story, 3) Use praise or flattery (91%) and 4) Offer moral justifications/psychological excuses (90%). There is a Reid Technique that involves pressurising the suspect to choose between two incriminating alternatives. The police manipulate suspects to make confessions through subtle techniques that make innocent suspects believe that they are really guilty. Irwing’s (1980) research findings state that the main purpose of interrogations by the police is to obtain a confession for the purpose of using it as main evidence or subsidiary evidence. Even though there may be forensic, documentary or witness statement evidence against the suspect, confessional statements are helpful to secure conviction. Following are the observations of Irving on the impact of custody, interrogation itself and the suspect’s mental state whilst being interviewed. The custody of suspects produced extreme distress in them with the resultant abnormal mental state before interrogation. Irving concludes that interviews are mostly held with individuals who are not in normal mental state. In two-thirds of cases, police have been found to have adopted persuasive and manipulative interrogation techniques with the object of extracting information and confessions. Such tactics of more than one type have been used more than once with the suspect. (Gudjonsson, 2003). Prosecution and the court deliberately ignored the following points. 1) Evans could not have placed his wife’s body without the help or knowledge of Christie and his wife. 2) Babies who are neglected generally make big noises but during the said two days, Evans’ baby never bothered to disturb Christie or his wife. 3) During the three weeks in November, Christie or his dog never found the bodies of Mrs Evans and the baby. 4) During the trial of Evans, the skull of Muriel Eady whom Christie murdered in 1943 was unearthed by a sniffer dog in Christie’s garden and threw it into a nearby bombed house .The police which recovered it on the information from some children, got the pathologist’s report stating that the skull belonged to a bomb victim. Discussion and conclusion The whole episode shows that police and prosecution committed mistakes by implicating Timothy Evans in haste and without proper investigation. The prejudgement by the police without impartial and dispassionate investigation sealed the fate of Timothy Evans who voluntarily got into the police trap. It is strange how voluntary statements of a man with known history of mental imbalance was not seriously doubted. When the involvement of Christie in the serial murders came to light after the execution of Timothy Evans, it caused uneasiness among the Governmental authorities and others and hence they were quick to issue reports justifying Evan’s execution. It is strange that even the defence lawyers held the foregone conclusion that Evans was in fact guilty in spite clear evidences and circumstantial evidences in excluding Evans’ involvement. The abortion efforts to which Evans was party alone developed in him some guilt. This guilt developed as a part of conversion that led Evans into believing that he alone murdered his wife, that too only momentarily when he approached the police. The irrational behaviour on his part could only be the explanation for his hasty statement at the police station on the 30th November 1949. Although he was quick to retract his confession after he met with his mother at the prison, neither the jury nor the court bothered about using his confession as a prima facie evidence for his alleged guilt. Neither the court nor the prosecution, justified with circumstantial evidence with an abandoned confession. There was no justification of mens rea or actus reus by the court or the prosecution in the case. It is highly primitive, barbaric and jungle rule of law that led to the conviction of a young innocent man. The mens rea if properly handled, the punishment would have resulted in life sentence for want of proof beyond doubt regarding Evans’ guilt. His mental condition was not at all considered in the 20th century when knowledge of psychiatry had been fully developed. Further, the conviction of Evans for killing his daughter and conviction of Christie for killing of Evan’s wife instead of both are the carefully crafted sentences by the judiciary as otherwise wrongful sentencing of Evans would cast aspersions on the criminal justice system and citizens would lose faith in the judiciary. The Queen’s is only a pardon for the alleged guilt on Evans’ part. Instead of pardon, the Queen should have absolved him of the charges of murder. It is heartening that family of Evans and “Innocence” projects are still pursuing the case of wrongful conviction of Evans. Christie must have confessed to the murder of both Mrs Evans and their baby daughter, but in order to avoid complications, prosecution caused him to admit to only Mrs Evans murder as her husband had already been convicted for the murder of his baby. It is very strange that this kind of primitive justice should have taken place, that too in a democratic country, in the modern 20th century. References Brabin (1968) in Gudjonsson, G. H. (2003). The psychology of interrogations and confessions : a handbook. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons. Inbau et al (2001) in Gudjonsson, G. H. (2003). The psychology of interrogations and confessions : a handbook. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons. Irwing (1980) in Gudjonsson, G. H. (2003). The psychology of interrogations and confessions : a handbook. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons. Kennedy, 1988 p.141 in Gudjonsson, G. H. (2003). The psychology of interrogations and confessions : a handbook. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons. Leo (1994) in Gudjonsson, G. H. (2003). The psychology of interrogations and confessions : a handbook. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons. McKenzie (1989), in Gudjonsson, G. H. (2003). The psychology of interrogations and confessions : a handbook. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons. Sargant; s (1957) in Gudjonsson, G. H. (2003). The psychology of interrogations and confessions : a handbook. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons. Svartvick (1968) in Gudjonsson, G. H. (2003). The psychology of interrogations and confessions : a handbook. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons. The Innocence Project Annual Report, 2009. New York: Yeshiva University, Benjamin Cardozo Law School. Available online at: 20 December 2011 Read More