During the trial of a man who was accused of breaking into the home of television presenter and journalist Dr Miriam Stoppard, it emerged that supposedly matching prints were “fatally flawed”.
South Yorkshire police have been asked to investigate the case, which involves an expert from the Metropolitan Police’s fingerprint bureau. Dozens of previous convictions in which fingerprint evidence was used are being re-examined. If fundamental errors are uncovered, it may lead to a flood of appeals.Positive matches of fingerprints are considered flaw-proof and Scotland Yard said that this was the first time a false reading had been provided in a trial during the bureau’s 96-year history.The controversy arose from the trial of Andrew Chiori, 21, who was accused of breaking into Dr Stoppard’s west London home in 1995 and stealing pounds 41,000 worth of valuables.Southwark Crown Court heard that Scotland Yard finger print expert Simon Harris was “in no doubt” Mr Chiori was responsible after examining prints found at the crime scene. But experts called by Mr Chiori’s legal team said Mr Harris’s conclusions were “fatally flawed”.Mr Chiori was formally acquitted yesterday after Peter Grieves-Smith, prosecuting, conceded Mr Harris made “an error of judgement”. Mr Chiori spent two months in jail on remand before being released.Mr Grieves-Smith told Judge Butler: “I am asked to apologise for the error that he made. The work he has done in the past is being double-checked”.Judge Butler replied: “He simply got it wrong? Well, we all make mistakes.

But he’ll have to explain it to the inquiry.”But there is no doubt thrown on the ethicacy of fingerprint evidence being used for the prosecution, provided the expert does his work properly,” he added.Detective Superintendent David Foss, of South Yorkshire Police, has been asked to investigate the case A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said it was a “human error”. “It’s the first time this has happened at the Metropolitan Police fingerprint bureau.”The issue of fingerprint evidence was raised last November when some of Britain’s leading forensic experts accused chief constables of scrapping the standard of proof for fingerprint matches to boost convictions. Fingerprint specialists at Scotland Yard told The Independent they were angry that police chiefs have decided the current 16-point match standard is unnecessarily tough and results in guilty people going free.The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) has agreed to drop the existing standard in favour of one used in Australia in which the prosecution relies upon a qualified expert to determine whether two sets of prints match.But the Veteran Fingerprint Experts’ Association, which is made up of civilian specialists in the Metropolitan Police, who have at least 25 years experience, believes the changes could result in miscarriages of justice.Peter Jones, chairman of the Expert’s Association, said: “As soon as you start tinkering with the standard, there’s a chance you could get it wrong.”. As masters of stag hounds met last night to discuss the National Trust’s shattering report on their sport, one said that his hunt might have to give up pursuing deer because of its conclusions. Peter Barfoot, master of the New Forest Buckhounds, said: ”If this report is well founded and backed up then no one is going to knock it.
“Yes, we’d have to review what we’re doing.”There are four staghound packs in Britain, one in the New Forest hunting fallow deer and the remainder taking red deer in the West Country. Some, like the New Forest, hardly use any National Trust land while others like the Quantocks are heavily reliant on it.Yesterday, the master of the Devon and Somerset Stag-hounds, Diana Scott, was in tears as she rang the British Field Sports Society to seek information on the report. She did not want to talk to the press.The Trust’s ruling council is today expected to agree not to grant any of its hunting licences when they come up for renewal later this month.

The New Forest’s licence has already just expired.Some of the land involved had covenants or ”memoranda of wishes” attached to it when it was donated to the Trust, in which the owners insist that staghunting continue in perpetuity.However, the trust, the nation’s wealthiest and best-supported conservation charity, has already squared Sir John Acland, son of Sir Richard Acland who gave a huge tract of Exmoor land with just such a wish attached.Trust chairman Charles Nunneley said that Sir John had told him if his father had known about the suffering of the deer exposed by the scientists’ report, he would never have made such a wish.Janet George of the British Field Sports Society, which campaigns for huntsmen, shooters and fishermen, said: ”The report is seriously bad news – the degree of these findings has astonished us.”The report’s author, Professor Bateson, said comparisons should not be made between hunting red deer and foxes – but they will.While it might be supposed that the fox also suffers enormous stress in the chase, they are naturally less sedentary animals than the deer, with more stamina and roam greater distances.Furthermore, while only 5 per cent of shot red deer are left wounded rather than dead, the culling of foxes with guns probably causes proportionately higher suffering. They are smaller targets and shotguns are usually used, so a higher proportion of shot foxes are probably left suffering the agony of wounds.There is no real dispute about the need to control red deer. They have no natural predators and would destroy their habitat if numbers were not kept down.The Trust has been debating the cruelty involved in using hunting with hounds as a control for nearly 10 years without any decisive action – until yesterday. Its top management has been startled and persuaded by Professor Bateson’s unequivocal report.Will the ruling, 52-member council feel the same when it meets today? ”It’ll be a bit of a disaster for us if it doesn’t,” said one Trust insider.The fieldwork was done by biologist Elizabeth Bradshaw, who spent 18 months in West Somerset following the hunts and taking blood samples.She and Professor Bateson paid tribute to the huntsmen for their full co-operation, but said that if they now continued it was “in the full knowledge that they are causing suffering”.Professor Bateson quoted one ardent, lifelong stag-hunting farmer from the area, who told the scientists: “If your report goes against us, perhaps we shouldn’t be doing what we’re doing.”. A gang of eight boys aged between 14 and 17 “violently and repeatedly” raped an Austrian tourist visiting London and then hurled her naked into a canal, a jury was told yesterday. Seven youths, including the 14-year-old “ringleader”, had already admitted raping the 32-year-old woman in September last year, John Bevan QC, prosecuting, told the Old Bailey jury.
A boy aged 15, alleged to be the eighth member of the gang, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, denies three charges of rape, indecent assault and robbery.The woman, who cannot be named, was kicked, punched, and subjected to a multiple rape ordeal and other “sexual indignities” after going for a midnight stroll from her hotel in the King’s Cross area of London, Mr Bevan said.”It may be she was naive. On the other hand, it may be that she simply thought London was a safe place for a woman alone She was sadly mistaken.

She was approached and, as she thought, idly chatted to by a group of eight people she regarded as children.”Once they took her to where they could safely attack her, she was frogmarched down Regent’s Canal and, after her clothing had been torn off her, she was violently and repeatedly raped by each one in turn.”She was then thrown into the canal She survived. Perhaps it is a tribute to her toughness and good sense that she did, once she realised that resistance was hopeless and indeed dangerous.”Mr Bevan said: “The behaviour of these youths, acting in a pack as they were, defies rational understanding. The oldest was 17, while the rest were 16 or less and three of them, including this defendant, were 14.Mr Bevan said the youths asked her if she wanted to go to a party, but she told them in her halting English that it was not a good idea. Then they dragged her along a towpath.She was stripped, hit and kicked in the face and thrown to the ground “and pinioned by her arms and legs”.Mr Bevan said the woman was “raped repeatedly” and compelled to perform other acts on some of the gang. One black youth who made her perform a sex act “threatened to kill her if she bit him in the process”, Mr Bevan said.He said the offence was “overtly racist in nature”, as there were repeated references to “the white bitch”.Thevictim, aged 33 and living in Vienna, said that as they dragged her along the canal bank they held her mouth shut.Mr Bevan asked her what she thought they wanted “I thought they were going to rob me,” she replied.