Asbury & McKie
Scotland
Date of Crime: January 8, 1997
David Asbury was convicted of murdering 51-year-old Marion
Ross and stealing a biscuit tin from her containing £1800. The
victim's ribs were crushed and she was stabbed in the eye with scissors. The scissors were left embedded in her throat. There were no signs of
forced entry, but police discovered that some builders, including Asbury,
had had access to her home the previous year. During a search of
Asbury's apartment, Detective Shirley McKie found a biscuit tin in his
bedroom containing £1800. Asbury maintained the tin and the money were
his. However the Scottish Fingerprint Service, a division of the
Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO), found Ross's fingerprint on it. Since the tin provided a possible motive of theft for the murder, police
believed the tin had belonged to the victim. At Asbury's trial for
murder, expert witnesses from the SCRO testified that a fingerprint found on
the tin was that of Ross.
During the investigation, after police dusted Ross's home for
fingerprints, they reported finding the left thumbprint of Detective McKie
inside the home. (The same detective who found or would find Asbury's
biscuit tin.) McKie was part of the team investigating Ross's murder. She had stood outside the house, but was not part of the unit that entered
the crime scene. The fingerprint meant that McKie had illegally
entered the house some time after the killing.
McKie denied ever having set foot inside the victim's house. But no one believed her: they all knew that fingerprints do not lie. Even McKie's father, a former police detective, did not at first believe
her. He told his daughter, “Look, Shirley, if they say your
fingerprint was found in there, then it must be your fingerprint ... They
had it checked and they had it checked. You never argue with that –
people have been hung on a fingerprint.”
At Asbury's trial, McKie was called to give evidence and
testified that she had never been inside Ross's house despite the
fingerprint evidence. Her testimony cast doubt on fingerprint
evidence. Her challenge of the Scottish Fingerprint Service was
unheard of. Nine months after the trial, McKie was charged with
perjury.
At this stage, McKie, and those who supported her, believed
that the found fingerprint was hers. The question was, “How did it get
there?” According to her father, “We wondered if she'd once visited a
joiner's yard and touched a plank of wood that ended up inside Marion Ross's
house.” There was also the possibility that it was forged. While
surfing the Internet, McKie came across an American fingerprint expert named
Pat Wertheim, who had trained FBI personnel. He came to the UK with
another expert named David Grieve.
At McKie's perjury trial, the American experts testified that
the fingerprint found in Ross's house and identified as McKie's bore no
resemblance to her actual fingerprint. One of experts stated that the
“obvious” differences took only “seconds to see.” As a result of the
expert testimony, McKie was acquitted of perjury. She was later
awarded £750,000 for her ordeal.
McKie's vindication led the BBC News organization to question Asbury's
conviction, as the same four SCRO experts who had misidentified McKie's
fingerprint had made the fingerprint identification in Asbury's case. The
BBC had Wertheim and Allan Bayle, a fingerprint expert for New Scotland
Yard, examine the fingerprint that convicted Asbury. While the experts found
similarities between the print on the tin and that of Ross, both agreed that
it was not Ross's print. The finding meant that the SCRO had been wrong on
two prints in the same case. In 2000, Asbury was released from jail on
appeal after having spent 3 1/2 years in prison. In 2002, his conviction was
quashed. [9/08]
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References:
The Guardian,
BBC
News
Posted in:
Victims of the State,
United Kingdom Cases, False
Fingerprint Evidence, Favorite Case Stories
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