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Archives for May 2010

Cases not necessarily 'open and shut'


A 22-year-old British man, Luke Walker, has been of his girlfriend, Chelsea Hyndman on the Greek island of Crete. Panorama's John Sweeney, whose investigative journalism has examined several cases of wrongful conviction, warns that often things may not always be as open and shut as they might first appear and worries when the media jumps to conclusions.

To some, this is how things might look at first blush in Malia, Crete - a sun-soaked corner of the Greek island that is full of Brits enjoying their holidays. Among them was a young couple intent on working their way through the summer while soaking up the sun. What if that couple had been drinking - a lot. And then things turn ugly. Luke Walker, jealous at Chelsea, originally from West Yorkshire, beats her up so badly she dies of ruptured internal organs. He's got scratches on his skin and the clear conclusion is that her injuries can only be consistent with him beating her up.

A Greek police spokeswoman in Athens said: "This was not due to illness. It was the result of physical violence." She said the couple were living together in rented rooms in the coastal holiday resort of Malia and added: "It is said that they often quarrelled."

Some will quickly jump to, "Lock him up and throw away the key".

Some of the death here in the UK looked pretty damning, with Walker being accused of "avoiding the cameras" as he was escorted under police guard into the courthouse.

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Mr Walker has now been charged with murder.

But if we stop and rewind the tape of him being brought to court we see Luke Walker, wearing shorts and a t-shirt and looking shattered. The police car he is in pulls up and Walker emerges handcuffed from the back seat. The officer who escorts Walker seems professionally embarrassed by the presence of the cameras outside the magistrates' court. The policeman grabs Walker by the back of the right arm, gathers pace and heaves him past the reporters and cameraman, physically manhandling him up the stairs and into the courthouse.
It is the policeman who appears more eager to avoid the cameras than Walker.

If Luke Walker is innocent then he's just lost the love of his life and, worse, been accused of her murder.

As it happens, I know two of Walker's relatives, Carl and Rona Swain. Carl is the brother of Angela Gay who was of salt-poisoning the little boy, Christian, who she adopted with her husband, Ian Gay.

In that case, the doctors worked out the level of salt in the dying boy and concluded that he must have been poisoned with salt. The main intellectual framework for this deduction was 'Non-accidental salt poisoning' - a theory provided by Professor back in 1993.

That paper failed to distinguish between the symptoms you might see in salt-poisoning and the symptoms you might see in natural disease. It failed to give proper weight to the possibility of brain-related chemical imbalances causing too much salt in the blood, not malign intention.
Christian had a failure in his thirst mechanism inside his brain, which meant that he was not poisoned with salt at all, and Angela and Ian Gay went to prison because the expert opinion was just plain wrong.

The Swains tell me that Luke Walker loved Chelsea to bits and that they were true sweethearts, that he could not have killed her. I have no idea about that and because they are his family I have to ask - you would say that, wouldn't you?

But before the lynch-mob surrounds Mr Walker and decides that a man in handcuffs must have done something wrong - it is perhaps fair to point out the following: Luke Walker has never done anything truly horrible in his life. Also worth noting is that Chelsea had gone out on a girl's night without Walker and at one point tripped over a girlfriend's leg, falling heavily, so that her tummy landed on her own clenched fist - an accident that seven witnesses remember happening on 6 May.

She fell ill five days later and died on the 17 May. Such an innocent explanation as to how Chelsea received the injuries that police say killed her - especially the timing - seems odd.

But odd accidents can kill.

was a beautiful actress who went skiing, banged her head, recovered, talked, joked - a lucid interval - and then she died. The doctors call what happened to Natasha TADD, Talk And Deteriorate and Die - in plain English that you may receive a potentially fatal injury, but there is a time lapse before you pass on.

As it happens, I know her aunt, Vanessa Redgrave, a bit - we both bang on about Chechnya, with good reason - and the loss of this beautiful and generous woman was a great tragedy. But if there is any good, ever, to come out of someone's death, it might just be to prevent future injustice.

So, before the crowds begin to circle in Crete and decide that Luke Walker is guilty, it is worth pausing to remember that experts can and do sometimes get it wrong, that wonderful people can die by accident, and that a man is innocent until proven guilty.

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