Editor’s Note

This article refers to the injustices suffered by the late Annette Hewins and Donna Clarke and Denise Sullivan and also the now notorious miscarriage of justice that occurred in the Lynette White Inquiry. It and further articles relating to those injustices are being published on this site because of the connection to athletics, which will be made clear in future articles.

The Editor

By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (October 17^th 2025)

The Adversarial Conundrum

Too often what should have been a very simple tale has been obfuscated beyond recognition in order to evade the consequences of inconvenient facts. Occam’s Razor may not apply to science itself as new data has disproved conventional scientific orthodoxy, no matter how simple that orthodoxy had been, but it does apply in the field of forensic science – the application of sciences in a legal environment (courts).

Properly constituted and applied forensic sciences cannot lie – sadly, the adversarial system of justice involves competing interests to such an extent that even if a scientific test could prove innocence or guilt, neither side wants to conduct that test themselves as it runs the risk of proving the opposite of what is in the interests of their client. Consequently, the truth can and has fallen between these two stools.

And even if such tests are conducted, if the results are inconvenient to one side or the other, then the circle must be squared.

Squaring the Circle

Sadly, a feature of many an injustice is that the science actually had a very simple story to tell, but was prevented from doing so because the results were more than a little inconvenient. It is not restricted to these cases, but that occurred in both the investigations into the horrific sexually-motivated murder of Lynette White and also the investigation into the arson on the Gurnos Estate in Merthyr Tydfil, which claimed the lives of Diane Jones, 21, and her daughters Shauna Hibberd, 2- years-old, and 13-months-old Sarah-Jane Hibberd[1].

Both investigations resulted in inordinately lengthy trials, which involved the distortion of what the forensic science had actually tried to say. Both investigations subsequently resulted in easily preventable grotesque and now notorious miscarriages of justice.

In both the Lynette White Inquiry and also the Gurnos Fire case the forensic science was actually the smoking gun of innocence. If only the principle of Occam’s Razor had been applied. Sadly, in both inquiries the forensic science evidence showed that it had been blunted.[2]

The Smoking Gun of Innocence

In April 1988, two months after the appalling sexually-motivated murder of Lynette White, the male Y-chromosome was detected in blood that had been shed by the murderer. The obvious and correct inference was that the murderer was male. Other evidence established that the murder had been committed by one person acting on his own. The investigation proceeded – rightly – on that basis until shortly before the Cardiff Five were wrongly arrested. A few days earlier ‘one hell of a coincidence’ occurred.

Police discovered through an unrelated case that alleged eyewitness, Angela Psaila, possessed the same combination of blood groups as the murderer. This was used to ‘prove’ that she had been present during the murder and was forced to take part. There was, however an obvious problem – she did not possess Y-chromosomes. No problem – the cocktail hypothesis could square the circle.

Yusef Abdullahi, one of the wrongly accused Cardiff Five, was alleged to have punched Psaila, causing her to bleed on the inside of her mouth – then her blood dripped onto Abdullahi’s cut hand and their blood allegedly mixed so intimately from that split second contact that it gave the impression of a male with that combination of blood groups rather than the cocktail of male and female blood.

Really? Whatever happened to Occam’s Razor? The far more likely explanation that the murderer was a man acting on his own was never eliminated. It was eventually proven when the SGM+ DNA tests showed that the murderer had deposited his blood on several samples. Jeffrey Gafoor was identified as that man. By then, the damage had been done. A grotesque miscarriage of justice had occurred and several lives had been wrecked. Nobody was ever held responsible for the shameful manipulation of the forensic science. Why not?

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[1] For further information on the manipulation of the forensic science evidence in that inquiry see The Smoking Gun of Innocence (Part Two) which will be published here soon.

[2] In a nutshell the principle of Occam’s Razor, named after Friar William of Ockham, is that the simplest explanation is preferrable. Science has often disproved that, but the application of science in a legal environment (actually what forensic science means) needs to be kept as simple as possible. After all, it is far from difficult to confuse people with science if that was the intention – necessity even – to turn allow inconvenient facts to be disputed or even ignored.