Michael Stone (murderer)

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Michael Stone (born Michael John Goodban in 1960) is a British criminal who was convicted of a notorious double-murder in 1996. He has continued to assert his innocence. His original conviction was overturned on appeal but a second trial resulted in another verdict of guilty after another prisoner claimed that Stone had confessed to the killings while on remand in jail. His most recent appeal, in 2004, also failed.

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[edit] Murder

On July 9, 1996, in a country lane in Kent, Lin Russell, aged forty-five, and her two daughters, six-year-old Megan and nine-year-old Josie, were tied up and savagely beaten with a hammer. Lin and Megan were killed but, despite appalling head injuries, Josie survived and went on to make an excellent recovery. Josie's recovery and the way she and her father, Shaun Russell, coped with the aftermath of the tragedy were the subject of a BBC documentary. Father and daughter had by then moved to the Nantlle Valley in Gwynedd [1]

[edit] Trial and consequences

The crime received a great deal of publicity and in July 1997 police arrested and charged thirty-seven-year-old Michael Stone with the crimes. Stone pleaded not guilty at his original trial in 1998 but was convicted and sentenced to life.

It was later determined that Stone had previous convictions and had been diagnosed as a psychopath, and in the light of his conviction the Labour government suggested a plan to incarcerate those diagnosed as psychopaths without their having committed a crime. As English law stands at the moment, those with personality disorders cannot be held against their will if they have not committed a crime, unlike those with a mental illness; the basis for this is that personality disorders are not regarded as treatable. This proposal was later dropped as many people were wary of a plan to lock up people without their having committed a crime, particularly as a diagnosis of personality disorder can often be quite subjective.

[edit] Appeals and later developments

The Court of Appeal later ordered a retrial after a key prosecution witness went back on his evidence, but Stone was convicted a second time in 2001. Lawyers for Stone once again argued that his trial was not fair, this time because of the way the trial judge had summed up the case. Stone lost, and his life imprisonment term stands.[citation needed]

Michael Stone's conviction is still held by some to be a miscarriage of justice [2] on the grounds that the evidence against him came from a prisoner in another cell who claimed that Stone had confessed to the crimes by shouting through a duct joining two cells. The prisoner who provided the evidence, Damien Daley, was described in court as a "career criminal". There was little forensic evidence available, and what there was (a few hairs and a smudged fingerprint) could not be linked to Stone. However, Nigel Sweeney QC for the Crown, said that at the trial Daley had accepted "he was an individual who would lie when it suited him"[citation needed] and had nothing to gain by lying about Stone.

On 21 December 2006, a High Court judge decided that Stone should spent at least 25 years in prison before being considered for parole. This means that he is likely to remain behind bars until at least 2023 and the age of 63.[3]In September 2007 it was announced that The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is assessing if there is "any new evidence or anything to cast doubt on the safety of his convictions". CCRC spokeswoman said on Sunday: "His [Stone's] case file has been allocated to a case review manager."If there is any doubt over his convictions, then his case will be referred to the Court of Appeal. "We will look to consider whether there was anything that wasn't considered at trial or appeal." The spokeswoman added that the timescale for examining the case could be anything from a "few months to years".[citation needed]

[edit] Report

A report in to the murders for which Stone was convicted has made a number of criticisms of his care, including a failure to share information between agencies.[4]

[edit] External links