The Innocence Project - Did the CCRC make the correct decision in the Neil Warner Case?

On 19th March 1991, Neil Warner was convicted of the murders of Mr. and Mrs Pool, an elderly couple residing in Easthampton. He was imprisoned for two life sentences. Since then, Mr. Warner has applied to the Criminal Convictions Review Commission in an attempt to have his case seen by the Court of Appeal, and ultimately, clear his name for good. However, things did not go to plan for Mr. Warner as the CCRC deemed his case 'unsafe', meaning that until new evidence is found he will have to sit out his service. This blog post will look at whether or not this was the correct decision.

The first avenue to go down is prints left at the crime scene; police found Mr. Warner's fingerprints above where the murder weapon was kept and on the window frame he escaped through, and they also found a shoe print matching a pair that Mr. Warner owns on the couple's dining room table. All of this was downstairs but the bodies of the elderly couple were found upstairs. Neil Warner claimed that he entered the house with a drunken intention to steal but did not venture upstairs. He says that he entered through the open front door and would've exited that way too but for someone walking past. The CCRC would have deemed this has unsafe for appeal as it puts him at the crime scene.

Further evidence overturns Mr. Warner's assertions that he didn't go upstairs, with fibres being found in the bedroom that are 'indistinguishable' from those on the blue jumper he was wearing on the night. The pullover was left at the crime scene as Mr. Warner claims to have used it to rub out finger prints. He left with Mr. Pool's shirt which, the defence claimed, was kept upstairs. This shirt was later retrieved at Mr. Warner's caravan.

Finger prints that Mr. Warner seemed to forget to wipe away were found above where the murder weapon was placed. Evidence such as this does not help Mr. Warner as they were the only 'foreign' prints discovered near the weapon. The CCRC would question why he would have been near it if he did not have any intention to use it.

DNA tests confirmed that most of the hair strands found at the scene were Mr. Pool's, however, they also form an incomplete profile for Mr. Warner, leaving a 1/680 chance that it was not him who committed the murder. When reviewing this evidence the CCRC will say that there is next to no chance that 680 individual people entered the house on the night in question.

There was some evidence in favour of Mr. Warner. An unidentified finger print found on the back door handle belonged to Martin Smith, a man accused of being a 'peeping Tom'. There were some inconsistencies in the statements that he gave the police and was an option that the defence for Mr. Warner did not use. The CCRC will acknowledge that this puts Mr. Smith at the scene, however, it does not show he entered the house at all.

In conclusion, the evidence stacks up very unfavourable for Mr. Warner and it is clear to me why the CCRC deemed his case 'unsafe'. Simply put, the amount of evidence against him is enormous and cannot be ignored.