{"id":279,"date":"2006-03-05T23:00:34","date_gmt":"2006-03-05T23:00:34","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2006-03-05T23:00:34","modified_gmt":"2006-03-05T23:00:34","slug":"the-balance-of-individual-rights-and-the-need-for-police-investigative-powers-or-simple-dishonesty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=279","title":{"rendered":"The balance of individual rights and the need for police investigative powers, or simple dishonesty?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"WIDTH: 203px; HEIGHT: 152px\" alt=\"Shirley McKie\" hspace=0 src=\"http:\/\/sixthform.info\/lawblog\/files\/shirley_mckie_01.jpg\" align=middle border=0>Detective Constable <strong>Shirley McKie<\/strong> was wrongly identified as having been present at a crime scene; when she denied having been present she was accused of lying and was tried for perjury in 1999. She was acquitted. <\/p>\n<p>McKie&#8217;s thumbprint was alleged to have been found when she was part of a police team investigating a murder in Scotland. At the trial of the alleged murderer she stated that she had not been inside the murder scene. Four experts from the <strong>Scottish Criminal Records Office<\/strong> wrongly identified a thumbprint from inside the house as hers and they stand accused of <strong>manipulating evidence and covering up errors<\/strong>. <br \/>Police and forensic experts not connected with the McKie case believe that mistakes were covered up because if they admitted earlier errors it would leave them open to a scandal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Donald Findlay QC, who defended McKie in her perjury trial says, <strong><em>&#8220;Fingerprint evidence used to be considered as sanct. Now I would be more inclined to challenge it. For all we know, people may have been convicted wrongly on fingerprint evidence, and that is an appalling business&#8221;<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>The point about this story which is <strong>8 years old<\/strong> is that a civil hearing in a Scottish court is underway. Whatever the outcome, the whole fingerprint establishment in the UK and in Scotland in particular are under increasing pressure from critics, and this case will become a cause celebre in the debate over the <strong><em>&#8220;balance of individual rights and the need for police investigative powers&#8221;<\/em><\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p>Website <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shirleymckie.com\/index.htm\">here <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Detective Constable Shirley McKie was wrongly identified as having been present at a crime scene; when she denied having been present she was accused of lying and was tried for perjury in 1999. She was acquitted. McKie&#8217;s thumbprint was alleged to have been found when she was part of a police team investigating a murder [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}