Chamberlain Dingo Trial(英)

God slew Saul for that. Do you know Saul and the Witch of Endor?"

　　First One Coroner's Inquest, Then Another

　　It fell to the magistrate and coroner of Alice Springs, Denis Barritt, to conduct what would eventually turn out to be the first of three coroner's inquests into the death of Azaria Chamberlain. Journalists crowded into Barritt's no. 2 courtroom, with its high ceilings, polished furniture, and landscape paintings. The inquiry opened on December 16, 1980 with Ashley Macknay for the Northern Territory laying out the case for human intervention in her death. The evidence suggests that the clothes were put in place, not dragged by a dingo and the clothes show signs of being removed from the baby by a human, Macknay argued. Moreover, he added, the damage to the clothes is inconsistent with being caused by a dingo. Macknay questioned Lindy Chamberlain, but generally failed to show her as a mother with either the will or motive to kill her own child.

　　Television cameras were live when Barritt announced his findings. Barritt concluded his discussion of the voluminous evidence by finding that Azaria "met her death when attacked by a wild dingo whilst asleep in her family's tent." Neither of her parents were, Barritt found, "in any degree whatsoever responsible for her death." Still, the number of oddities concerning Azaria's clothing convinced Barritt that "the body of Azaria was taken from the possession of the dingo and disposed of by an unknown method, by a person or persons name unknown."

　　Coroner Barritt's findings might have been expected to discourage investigators bent on proving Lindy Chamberlain a murderer, but they did not. On September 19, 1981, officers of the Northern Territory police conducted a four-and-a-half hour search of the Chamberlain's home, seizing over three hundred items ranging from items of clothing to scissors to the yellow Torana that they had driven to Ayers Rock. Detective Charlwood revealed to Lindy that the search had been prompted in part by the findings of British forensic expert James Cameron, who concluded from

examining the baby's clothes that no dingo had been involved in her disappearance. Lindy reacted coolly: "I didn't know there were any dingo experts in London."

　　In November 1981, Chief Minister Everingham, as attorney-general for the Northern Territory filed a motion to quash the findings of the first inquest based on newly discovered evidence. What finally convinced authorities to push for a second inquest was the presence of large quantities of blood in the Chamberlain's dismantled automobile.

　　The second inquest into the death of Azaria opened in Alice Springs on December 14, 1981, before Coroner Gerry P. Galvin. Des Sturgess, the barrister assisting the coroner, made clear from his questioning of the Chamberlains his belief that Lindy Chamberlain took Azaria from the campsite on the evening of August 17, 1980 and murdered her in their yellow Torana with a sharp instrument, probably a scissors. Many of the questions directed at the Chamberlain concerned the presence of blood in the family automobile: "Did you notice any blood staining inside or outside the car when you cleaned it?", "Do you recall cleaning blood off the seats?" Sturgess called biologist Joy Kuhl, who testified that she found fetal blood beneath the passenger seat of the Torana. James Cameron claimed in his testimony that the tear found on Azaria's jumpsuit could hardly have come from a dingo——"It's more consistent with scissors."

　　A reporter from Sydney, Malcolm Brown, offered a concise comparison between the two coroners' investigations. "The first inquest was about dingoes," Brown said, while "this one is about blood." The blood evidence persuaded Galvin. He charged Lindy Chamberlain with murder and Michael as being an accessory after the fact.

　　The Trial

　　Despite the lack of a body, the lack of a motive, and the lack of any eye-witnesses, the Northern Territory opened its prosecution of (a now pregnant) Lindy and Michael Chamberlain in a modern two-story courthouse in Darwin on September 13, 1982. Justice James Muirhead, in crimson robes and a gray wig, sat on the bench in the crowded courtroom as attorneys for both sides worked to select twelve jurors from a panel of 123 all-white Territorians. When the selection process was completed, nine men and three women took their seats in the jury box. Defense attorney John Phillips was pleased with the group, telling his co-counsel Andrew Kirkham, "I think we've done well."

　　Ian Barker opened the case for the prosecution, telling jurors Azaria "died very quickly because somebody had cut her throat." Barker added, "The Crown does not venture to suggest any reason or motive for the killing. It is not part of our case that Mrs. Chamberlain had previously shown any ill will toward the child." Barker called Chamberlain's story about the dingo attack "a fanciful lie, calculated to conceal the truth."

　　The Crown's first witness, Ayers Rock tourist Sally Lowe, offered as much support for the defense as for the prosecution. Lowe described Lindy as being away from the barbecue only "six to ten minutes," a very short period in which to have committed the murder and temporarily disposed of the body, as the Crown claimed. Lowe also damaged the Crown's case by insisting, "I heard the baby cry——quite a serious cry," shortly before Lindy went to the tent and reportedly saw the dingo slinking off into the dark. On cross-examination, Lowe confirmed that she was "positive" she heard a baby cry——a cry that was suddenly cut off——and that the cry "definitely came from the tent." She also described Lindy before the incident having "a new-mum glow about her."

　　Testimony from others who were at the campground that August night generally presented a version of events that also seemed to aid the defense more than the prosecution, whose witnesses they were. Greg Lowe, Sally's husband, was asked on cross whether he saw any if the Chamberlains cleaning blood from their

Torana at the time when, according to the prosecution timeline, they would have had to have done so. "No, I didn't," Lowe answered. "There were quite a lot of people around at that time at the tent-site, and I'm sure if anything like that happened it would have been noticed." Judy West reported she heard Lindy cry "The dingo's got my baby!" just "five to ten minutes" after she heard a dingo growl——"low" and "deep"——outside the tent. She also testified that earlier she had been forced to shoo off a dingo that had grabbed her twelve-year old daughter by the arm and pulled.

　　Witness Amy Whittaker, however, provided jurors with evidence of the seemingly odd behavior that had turned public opinion against the Chamberlains earlier in the investigation. Whittaker testified that minutes after the alleged dingo attack, Michael Chamberlain had appeared at the doorway of her camper and announced, "A dingo has taken our baby, and she is probably dead by now." Whittaker also reported Lindy saying, as she tried to comfort her, "Whatever happens, it is God's will." She also described Lindy and Michael walking alone together into the the bush for "fifteen to twenty minutes:——a time during which the prosecution later argued the Chamberlains might have buried their baby.

　　Because the prosecution case depended heavily on convincing jurors that the blood that turned up in the Chamberlain's car belonged to Azaria, the Crown called to the stand Keyth Lenehan, a bleeding hitchhiker picked up by the Chamberlains who the defense maintained might account for the presence of blood. Barker wanted to establish that Lenehan did not carry unusually high levels of fetal hemoglobin in his adult bloodstream. Still, the prosecution's calling of Lenehan prompted one journalist to tell an assistant prosecutor, "So far all you've done is convince everybody that Lindy is innocent."

　　Reporters saw the tide beginning to move a bit in the Crown's direction when a parade of forensic experts took the stand. Dr. Andrew Scott, a biologist from Adelaide, testified that his study suggested that the blood on Azaria's singlet flowed downward, from what appeared to be from the cutting by a sharp instrument, in the area of the neck. Barry Cocks testified that the jumpsuit seemed cut, not torn by a dingo. Professor Malcolm Chaikin, Australia's leading textile expert, demonstrated for the jury how cutting the jumpsuit produced small loops of toweling, much like those discovered by investigators in Michael Chamberlain's camera bag, where police suspected Lindy might have temporarily hid her dead baby. On cross, the defense got Chaikin to admit that the loops might also have come from a new, unwashed suit. (The Chamberlains said that they sometimes used the camera bag as a place to stuff Azaria's clothes.)

　　Biologist Joy Kuhl, the prosecution's thirty-fifth witness, presented what the Crown saw as some of its most damning evidence. Kuhl told jurors that her tests proved that the blood found on the dash support bracket in the Chamberlain's Torana belonged to an infant. On cross, Defense Counsel Phillips forced Kuhl to admit all the plates she used in her actual blood tests "have been destroyed"——a practice she called "standard procedure in our laboratory." Phillips also raised questions about the accuracy of her test results, suggesting that the blood——if that's what it was——might well have come from the bleeding hitchhiker picked up by the Chamberlains in 1979.

　　Crown witness Bernard Sims had investigated about two dozen attacks by dogs on humans in his job as a London ondontologist. Sims saw nothing consistent with a dingo attack in Azaria's clothing, claimed that a dingo attack would cause "copious" bleeding, and indicated t

┨网页设计特效库┠ http://www。z┗co⊙l。com/网页特效/