14

The Fibres of Institutionalised Racism

7 October

This week we talk about Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered by five white youths in a racist attack, and the staggering mishandling of the case by the police. Joe explains fibre analysis and Sandra has burgers on her mind.

Joe got his information from:

• Wikipedia
• Casemine.com

Sandra got her information from:

• Wikipedia
• BBC News, which is also where the images can be found
• Article in The Guardian, by Jamie Grierson

Audio transcript

Midweek Murders contains graphic and explicit content, listener discretion is advised.

How have you been today?

[Long sigh] I think is the best way to sum up my day.

That good huh? [Laughter] Sorry, that was funny.

[Music]

So yeah, that's that's my life. Should we shall we wrap this up then?

We could start.

I'll start your mum.

I'll start your motorbike and then I'll drive it around in your mom's house.

Good luck, you don't know how to start a motorbike.

I could probably figure it out, how hard can it be? I mean you do it.

Doubt meme, doubt meme.

Okay. It's wednesday, which means that it's time to talk about crime. You're listening to Midweek Murders, with me Sandra.

And me Joe.

Cool. And this week we're gonna talk about the morder... Mortar...

The Mordor?

Sorry.

We're in middle earth.

Again. This week we're going to talk about the murder of Stephen Lawrence. I got my information from BBC news, a Guardian article by Jamie Grierson, and wiki wiki wah.

Oh. You stole my jam.

I did.

Dick. [fake coughing] Sorry, got a cough. I got my information also from the generally accessible encyclopedia that is well known to the general populace, and a website called case mine.

What do you find there? Rare gems of case?

Okay. On the 22nd of april 1993, Stephen Lawrence, an 18 year old prolific athlete and student with dreams of becoming an architect, and his friend Duwyane Brooks were waiting for a bus at a bus stop at Well Hall Road, in London. Stephen had walked up the road to see if he could spot the bus, because they had been waiting at that bus stop for quite a while, and on his way back to the bus stop Lawrence gets accosted by five white young men who shouted racial slurs at them. The attacker stabbed Stephen with a butcher's knife, which Duwayne first thought was an iron bar or something of the sort, and Duwayne shouts at Stephen to run. The attackers disappear another road, whilst Dwayne and Stephen run for about 120 meters before Stephen collapses. Duwayne tries to flag down other bypassers, cars, all sorts of people, nobody stops. So he runs to find a phone box and calls 911. No, that's the Swedish number?

American.

Yes, the American number. It's not even Swedish. And calls 999, asking for an ambulance. Unfortunately he gets the address of the phone box slightly wrong, I read in some place. Now I can't really say if that's true, but we're gonna go with it. When the ambulance finally arrives, well after police had gotten to the scene, they discovered that Stephen had suffered from multiple stab wounds and had bled to death. The police that first got to the scene had not checked Stephen's injuries or administered first aid. Because of racism, the police did not believe Duwayne's description of events, so they failed to secure crime scene evidence. Also, I don't think the police even knew that he was stabbed, they didn't even check. I think Duwayne thought that he had been hit on the head as well, so they might have thought that the blood was from a head wound. Oh no, my internet connection is unstable. Can you hear me?

Yes, I hear you.

Okay, did I cut out?

No.

Okay. Good, good. I was like we're gonna die, I don't have any police... No, any internet connection. Well if they're as shit as this, then... They did nothing to help, did they?

Well, they're not anymore. Because they got in a lot of trouble.

Well thank god for that.

Well, the institute got in a lot of trouble. All of the officers that were involved either retired, or retired before their sentence was passed.

Okay, I didn't know that. Did you read that at crime mines? Case mines?

I can't remember where I read that, but I didn't feel it was particularly relevant.

Okay.

Because I'm the forensics guy.

That's my job, and I didn't even check. Three witnesses at the bus stop also confirmed that the attack had been sudden and unprovoked, but police still thought that Stephen and Duwayne was involved in something nefarious. The family liaisons that they sent to Stephen's family even tried to insinuate to them that he must have been out to burglar houses... Am I saying that correctly?

It's burglar.

They even tried to insinuate to Stephen's family that they must have been out to burgular households.

Burglar.

How is this so difficult? Burger... No!

Burglar.

Burger. No, I'm just kidding. Oh god, I can't say it now. Must have been out to break into houses...

I mean burgling is stealing things, so probably go with rob houses rather than just break in.

Okay.

Like "oh Stephen, we made it, we're in the house. What do we do now?". "Well I guess this is it, we should probably just leave".

They insinuated that to Stephen's family because he was wearing gloves, even though it was cold as fuck out and everyone was wearing multiple layers. Which is also a thing that was hypothesized as to why they didn't see or check for the injuries, because he was wearing so much clothes.

It also has an important part to play in the initial round of the trial.

Oh, interesting. They also asked Duwayne if the racial slur, the n-word, was a nickname for Stephen. I was like: "what the fuck is happening here". Oh god. Several residents of the area had come forth to the police to name the attackers, as similar racist attacks had happened at least three times before in the same area. And they got like 26 tips. They named Gary Dobson, brothers Neil and Jamie Acourt, Luke Knight and David Norris as the suspects. And they were like: "these are the guys". And the police were like: "Who? Where?".

We need more information, a name isn't enough.

They were supposed to surveil them and they didn't even do that. And one of the police photographers that were there, even though the surveillance team wasn't there, had photographed... I think it was Jamie Acourt, taking out a bed liner full of things and driving off with it. Could have been evidence, who knows. Despite this, no arrests were made until the time period of the 7th of May and the 23rd of June. And the superintendent, Brian Weeden, who was in charge of the investigation, claimed that the delay had happened because he didn't know that the law allowed arrest upon reasonable suspicion. And then I wrote: which is a basic point of criminal law. More or less stole that from wikipedia, but we can say that it's mine.

I mean, I just wonder how this guy got to be superintendent, because that is a high-ranking police role, without knowing the basics of criminal law.

It makes no sense.

"I think I can't arrest him, my prime suspect who has been named by 26 individual witnesses. Because, you know, I haven't got any evidence on him".

I think it was because racism.

Yes, but also, I do think that he was useless.

Yeah, yeah, that too. On the 29th of July 1993, the charges against these suspects were dropped with the crown prosecution service citing insufficient evidence. Do you have anything on the first trial?

Yes. So the gang that were involved, Gary Dobson, David Norris, the Acourt brothers and Luke Knight, were all identified by Duwayne in a lineup.

Yeah.

So like your typical American cop show, everybody stands against the wall, the witness is behind glass and they pick them out...

Wait a minute, I know the word for this! An identi-titty parade. [Laughs]

An identity parade, yes. Eyewitness testimony is not admissible evidence in court. The reason for that is: because it's been proven psychologically that the victim or the witness, in high pressure and high stress environments, tends to not be able to recall key identifying features. Duwayne also admitted to the police during the investigation that his opinion could have been molded by gossip and tabloid headlines, that he'd heard and listened to about these suspects. So he went into this identity parade with a bias. Which again, rules out being able to admit that. The second thing is they couldn't use any... Or they didn't want to use any of the fiber analysis, because they thought that in the two weeks it had taken for Mr superintendent useless to arrest the suspects, would have been too long a time period to be able to get any useful evidence, fiber evidence, from the clothing. And I had another point... Oh yeah, and the clothes that Stephen Lawrence was wearing... So he was wearing about four or five different layers, and two of the layers that he was wearing, one of them they identified as being very reluctant to shed fiber, and the other as being very reluctant to hold shed fiber.

Okay.

So they were like: "well, we're not going to get any evidence from Stephen's clothing, we're not going to get any evidence from the suspect's clothing. And the only evidence we really have to identify any of these people is eyewitness testimony, which we can't accept anyway". So they threw it out.

So do you mean that they didn't check properly?

They did, they checked. But the degree of science that was available didn't bring any conclusive evidence at the time, and they didn't investigate further because of aforementioned reasons.

This is probably also, maybe a time where we should talk about the autopsy.

Time to talk about crime.

It's wednesday my dudes! The autopsy, did you read anything about that?

I couldn't find the actual autopsy report, but what I did find was that he received two particularly fatal stabs that were about five inches deep, or thirteen centimeters to our european listeners...

And to me, I wouldn't be able to...

You're Swedish, that's european.

Case in point.

One around his right collarbone and one around his left shoulder. When they looked at the wounds, they could see that one of them would have been caused while Stephen was upright, and one of them would have been caused while he was either on his way down, or already on the floor. Both of those stab wounds severed his axillary arteries. Now arteries are high pressure blood transport routes, which is why he bled out so quickly. They also punctured his lung, but a lot of the people that were investigating... A lot of the medical people that looked into it, were really impressed with how he managed to get up and run away, given these wounds that he received. So he really was in prime physical condition to be able to have a punctured lung and two of his arteries bleeding out, and still run for 120 meters. But that was the ultimate cause of death, was those two stab wounds severing his axillary arteries.

Yeah and to be fair, I have both of my lungs fully intact, I could not run 120 meters quickly, just now.

I think I'd probably pass out just thinking about 120 meters.

We're not in our prime physical condition. Definitely not.

My peak has passed.

Yeah, me too. Yeah, I had some things about the private investigation. So in 1994 the Lawrence family initiates a private investigation, but two of the suspects were never charged because of insufficient evidence. A planted police camera had caught all five suspects talk, like at the same time in the same room, at length about how much they hated black people, and how to torture and kill them. They also are caught on camera carrying hidden knives, exactly the same knives as was used in the attack. Because of Duwayne's identity parade thing, and because a police representative said that his witness testimony was questionable, because of the thing that you brought up about the headlines... And probably also because a lot of them had been suspects in similar attacks that were probably in the news. Like they had been suspects in like other racist attacks. The evidence was ruled inadmissible and the video was never showed to the jury. Subsequently the three remaining suspects were acquitted of murder in 1996. In February 1997, a coroner's inquest resumes. A jury reaches the verdict of:

"Unlawful killing in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five youths"

I don't know what a coroner's inquest is, but it doesn't mean that they get like put to jail or anything.

No. So the coroner is usually the person that is either involved or undertakes the autopsy post-mortem investigation. The coroner is a high-ranking official.

Okay.

So they have the power to say: "this person died of suspicious circumstances, look into what happened" but they don't have the power to take it to court, that lies with the crown prosecution.

Okay. In the inquest a jury reaches the verdict, but like it didn't lead to anything, so after this verdict the Daily Mail posts photos of the suspects with a headline that reads:

"Murderers: The Mail accuses these men of killing. If we are wrong, let them sue us"

Which was...

Bold.

Yeah, and also listed in kind of all of the things that I read about the case. Because they are saying that if they hadn't posted these photos nothing would have come of it, but that's not entirely true either, because like, the Lawrence family met with Nelson Mandela and had like all kinds of other things going on. In the same year the police are under two inquiries because of suspected racist conduct, and then I said "DUH". But then in the first inquiry they were like: "Yeah, they did a lot of things wrong, but it wasn't racism". And I was like: "what?!". I would just like to point out again, they asked if the n-word was a nickname! I was like: "yeah, okay, not racism. Okay, sure". In 1999 the Macpherson report is published, which accuses the met police of institutionalised racism, and they also bring up the case of staggering misconduct in this case. Three years later, David Norris and Neil Acourt are jailed for 18 months for shouting racial abuse and throwing a bottle at a black officer that was not on duty. So if he wasn't an officer, they probably wouldn't even have gotten into trouble. In April 2005 double jeopardy is scrapped. Double jeopardy is not a game show, it was the law... [Laughter] It was the law which prevented suspects from being tried twice for the same crime. So this obviously makes it possible to try them again. But it would take another six years before the trial against Gary Dobson, who was jailed for a drug-related offense at the time, and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence...

I think it's both important and interesting to know that historically the double jeopardy clause was, like you said, it stopped people from being retried for the same crime. One of the main reasons that it was overturned was because of the advancement of science. In forensics, new techniques were available that were more sensitive and more specific. So if someone had been acquitted by the jury because there wasn't enough evidence, now in the 2000s, techniques had advanced so much that it was possible to get more scientific data from evidence that was presented. The stipulation to being able to retry is that you needed... I can't remember the title, but it's something like...

I think it's probably new evidence, no?

It's not new evidence. You can use the same evidence, so long as the technique that was used to analyze it has advanced enough to be able to make it worthwhile.

Oh, cool.

You couldn't just say: "okay, we found a blood stain, we couldn't match it to DNA, let's just try again". But to say: "okay, we found a blood stain. Now that we've introduced mitochondrial PCR, we can now determine whose DNA this is". Then that evidence could be reused, but you needed the authorization of the person who is at the top of the crown prosecution service. That's the title that I can't remember. So any evidence that you want a retrial for needs that approval of that top lawyer, and in this specific case, which is the interesting part, that appeal for retrial to the court was produced by Keir Starmer who is the current leader of the labour party. Ooooh.

Ooooh.

Yeah, I found that interesting okay, so fuck off.

Okay. As we said, the trial started because new forensic evidence had come to light. Which consisted of, and now I have just copied the wikipedia page, so maybe you want to say something about the new evidence?

The new evidence is basically a shit ton of fiber analysis, unless you found something else?

No, it said...

I mean there was a blood spot.

Yeah.

Yeah a shit ton of fiber analysis. Now from personal experience, fiber analysis is one of the most boring parts of forensic fingerprinting.

Okay.

But the difference is, back when the case was first tried in the early 90s, the only techniques that they had to examine fibers would have been your normal optical microscope. You think of a microscope, you think of someone sitting down putting a slide on, looking down onto the machine and and seeing an image. Right? And then as time developed they discovered the use of a scanning electron microscope, and that's what really has revolutionized fiber analysis, and was how this case and all of the fiber tapes that they managed to retrieve got analyzed.

What is that?

A scanning electron microscope?

Yeah.

So where a normal optical microscope would use visible light, so you have a light source at the bottom, you put the slide of whatever, in this case fibers, on top of that light source and then basically the microscope is like a magnifying glass.

Yeah.

So you look down the eyepieces and you see a magnified image of whatever's on your slide. A scanning electron microscope is way, way, way, way, way more sensitive. So the way that it works is, it will send a beam of electrons onto your sample, in this case fiber, and the different surface texture of whatever you're looking at will bounce back those electrons at a specific rate. So anything that you look at that looks smooth, microscopically isn't smooth. It's got loads of indentations and divots and all of this that and the other. So when you fire something as small as an electron at it you can really tell the differences in the heights of the surface, which is called topography, and then a computer will convert the rate that the electrons are bounced back into an image and you can get an image of down to one nanometer. Which, if I do my maths, you've got a centimeter and then divide it by 10 is a millimeter, divided by 10 is a micrometer and divide it by 10 again is a nanometer. So it's really, really, really, really precise. And the scanning electron microscope can tell the composition of what it's made of as well, because different materials have a different...

Topography.

Yeah. A different topography to start with, but also a different refractive index of electrons. So a thread that is made of red dye will reflect differently than a thread that is made... Exactly the same piece of thread but dyed blue.

Oh that's interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah. I also have a question about the stain that they found on Dobson's jacket. They found a microscopic stain of Lawrence's blood and I'm guessing, which might be wrong, that in the 1990s they might not have been able to try that stain? And see that stain maybe?

Yeah. So they tested for blood on the material that they found the stain, but they used a presumptive test, which is basically just a bunch of chemicals that will change color in the presence of blood. That's perfectly legitimate. It's the first step that you do with a suspected blood stain, or in this case it was a stabbing, so you'd expect to find blood. So you do the presumptive test first, if it comes up negative there's no reason to test further. In this particular instance it tested negative. So the test that they used was called the KM presumptive test, that stands for Kastle-Meyer. I don't know how much detail you want on that?

No. You can skip the details on that test.

I mean, that's what I did my dissertation on, so...

Oh! If you want to say something...

I know quite a lot about presumptive testing but we won't bother getting into it. So yeah, they used Kastle-Meyer, it didn't show any color change, which to a forensic officer would indicate there's no presence of blood. That's how small this sample of blood was. So small that presumptive testing didn't give any result at all. As science develops and as techniques become more refined, they reanalyzed the data. I don't know, but I can only imagine that they found that blood spot through the electron microscope, because it was missed originally. Either they didn't look at that specific point, because they probably would have been able to see it under an optical microscope, but they probably weren't looking for it. So...

Do you know...

Go on.

No, I was just gonna ask. That microscopic stain was enough for them in 2011 to prove that it was Lawrence's blood, yes?

Yes.

That's how little you need for DNA, that's crazy.

So Kastle-Meyer has a sensitivity of being able to find one part of blood in 10 million parts of whatever fuck else is on that sample. So the Kastle-Meyer is really, really sensitive.

Yeah.

So you've got 10 million particles of whatever, and it only needs one of those 10 million to be blood to be able to detect blood. Just to put into perspective how small this blood spot was.

Yeah.

They found it, I presume through the electron microscope, and then they would have PCR'd it. We've mentioned it in one of the previous podcasts, but PCR - polymerase chain reaction, is basically an amplification technique for DNA. So you put...

They copy...

Yeah. You put your tiny little sample in it, and the PCR technique will copy what you've got and make a shit ton of copies of it, so that you've actually got something that you can work with. And then that sample was able to be matched to Stephen Lawrence's DNA with a certainty of one in one billion. There's almost no arguing that the blood spot that they found was blood that came from Stephen.

Yeah. The defense later argued as well, unsuccessfully though, that the fibers and stuff were cross-contamination of the evidence. But I'm guessing that that's not probable.

I don't know the police records, so I can't say for sure whether it wouldn't have been possible at all. Because knowing the police in the 90s it's perfectly believable that they would have bodged the chain of custody of evidence as we've seen in one of the other cases we covered, in that they threw all of the evidence in one cardboard box. What they found on reinvestigation, they looked at a couple of different techniques, so the way that you get fiber analysis is basically: you lay out the clothing that is the evidence, and you use a piece of sticky tape and you dab that sticky tape on your clothing a couple of times and put it on a clear piece of plastic. And you do that enough to cover the whole garment. Now what the defense was saying, is that it was perfectly possible for some of these fibers to have been cross-contaminated by poor police handling.

Yeah.

Now given that this was thrown out by court, I can only imagine that the chain of custody for each evidence item was legitimate and sound.

Okay.

So it's basically, this jumper gets put in this plastic bag, that plastic bag gets put in the evidence locker, and then anybody who wants to access that plastic bag needs to sign it in and out, and one person is in charge of that signing in and out log. My thoughts would be that the evidence was all kept in individual plastic bags and that it couldn't have been interfered with.

Yeah. In January 2012, because of this trial, Dobson and Norris are found guilty of murder. Both men receive life sentences. The other three men, they never really got put to justice, but in 2018 Jamie Acourt is sentenced to nine years in prison because of a drug related offense. So at least he's put away. But because it's nine years, it was a very serious drug-related offense, it wasn't like he was holding marijuana on him or stuff.

It was probably just possession with intent to supply.

Yeah it was, but it was crazy shit loads of drugs. So it wasn't like a couple of ounces, it was...

Oh, ounces. How imperial of you.

I'm adapting. But...

I like how, when it's in small quantities, it's ounces or fractions. If you're talking about weed, it's like: "yeah I'll have an eighth" and then once it starts getting into bigger quantities it moves into metric "he had 10 kilos of weed on him". Alright, make your mind up. Is it a fraction.... Is it imperial ounces or is it a metric kilo?

I can tell you what it is. It's confusing.

I can tell you what it is. It's Mary Joanna.

Mary Juana, it's an old people's way of saying it. It was funny.

I smoke one Mary Juana all the time.

One Mary Juana.

One Mary Juana cigarette.

Oh, do you put it in your pipe?

No, because then it's not a cigarette.

True. That's all of the things that I had about it. But also, there was a lot of like aftermath, because of the racism and stuff. I know.... I think that for british people it's probably pretty well known, or quite well known. He has like a day, and stuff like that. So I'm guessing that most people know about the aftermath, but we can just summarize it and say that the police were very racist.

Yeah. The fallout from this was basically a revolutionization of the met police.

Yeah.

They looked into the whole investigative process of the met police and pinpointed where they were being institutionally racist and said: "you can't do this anymore".

And that's not to say that they're not racist anymore, because they are. Some people are. There is still problems of that ilk in the police, but there's been a large...

Progress has been made. We're not there yet. But it has got better.

Yeah. You're saying progress has been made, but also, they voted in Boris Johnson, so I'm not that sure.

Yeah. I mean, the met police didn't vote in Boris Johnson, did they?

No, that's true. Yeah. What are you gonna do now...

And also, Boris isn't racist, colonialism is the way forward.

That was sarcasm, for you listeners. Do you know what I've done today?

Jack shit.

Yeah, that's true. But I've also played a lot of bioshock. I'm getting better at it.

I wanted to play more Primal, I didn't have any time so... I didn't. Is the moral of that story.

I'm sorry it was stressful for you today, I get it.

But you know, that's what your day is going to be like tomorrow, because you've got all the editing to do.

I haven't finished the audio transcript for last week's episode, so now...

Ah it's fine.

Our first four episodes are finished. And...

What episode are we on?

Fourteen.

Oh fuck off!

It's true.

No way have we done that many.

It's true, I've edited them all it's painfully true.

Jesus christ.

Yeah, I know, it's crazy isn't it. Oh! Do you know what as well? We're on amazon music now. So if you're not a paranoid person like me, and do have an alexa, you can say alexa...

Alexa, play despacito.

You can say: "alexa, play Midweek Murders". It's crazy.

How exciting.

Okay. Should we say goodbye? Goodbye listeners, thank you so much for listening to Midweek Murders. We'll see you next week.

Bye.

Topics

• Stephen Lawrence
• Racism in the UK police
• fibre analysis
• forensic science
• scanning electron microscope
• Fibre topography
• presumptive testing
• Stabbings
• Racist murders
• polymerase chain reaction
• true crime UK
• famous murder cases in the UK
• Blood stain evidence
• double jeopardy law
• Advances in forensic science
• Fibre evidence