'Police bullies aimed to break Mitchell into Jodi confession'

Published on Friday 8 February 2008 21:30

POLICE used bullying tactics to try to "break" Luke Mitchell into confessing to the murder of his girlfriend, Jodi Jones, it was alleged yesterday.

Officers had not interviewed the teenager, but had interrogated him in a way that would never have been allowed in any court, the defence counsel, Donald Findlay, QC, claimed to appeal judges.

Mr Findlay also said that evidence about Mitchell's storing bottles of urine in his bedroom had been put to the jury at his trial simply to blacken him as "some kind of oddity." He stated: "This evidence had nothing whatever to do with the death of Jodi... it was manifestly unfair and palpably unnecessary."

Mitchell is asking the Court of Criminal Appeal to quash his conviction for murdering Jodi in 2003, when they were both 14.

Mr Findlay said Mitchell had been detained after an early-morning raid at his home in Newbattle, Dalkeith, about six weeks after the murder.

"He was not merely questioned, he was subjected to a series of propositions and assertions. There were repeated questions with no opportunity for the boy to reply," he claimed.

He read extracts from a transcript, and one of the appeal judges, Lord Osborne, commented that it would be interesting to hear how the interview could be presented as "proper".

Mr Findlay said: "They were not interested in his answers, were indifferent to his explanations. What the police were trying to do... was to force from him a confession. The approach was nearer to interrogation than cross-examination."

He alleged that one officer should not have been conducting the interview because he had clearly "lost the plot", and he poured scorn on another officer entering the room as the "good cop."

Mr Findlay stated: "He comes in and does his, 'Let me put my arm round your shoulder, son... you can tell me' routine. They played a very nasty trick on the young man."

Lord Osborne said that at Mitchell's age, an appropriate adult should have been with him during the interview. Mr Findlay said: "There was a representative of the social work department, not that you would notice. He did absolutely nothing."

He said only parts of the interview had been used by the prosecution at Mitchell's trial.

Mr Findlay argued that none of the interview should have been allowed to be led as evidence, and he submitted that the trial judge had been wrong to rule it admissible.

On the evidence about bottles of urine found by the police during searches of Mitchell's home, Mr Findlay said: "It was clear the Crown were seeking to portray him in a particular light... as not being an ordinary teenager of 14 going on 15. All this was intended to create some prejudice in the minds of the jury that Luke was some kind of oddity who, in respect of the urine, had a habit which some people might regard as unsavoury to say the least, and bizarre at the other end of the scale."

The hearing will resume on Tuesday.