Chamberlain Dingo Trial(英)

hat a baby's head could not fit into the jaws of a dingo. On cross, Sims reaffirmed that a the opening of a dingo's "mouth wouldn't allow it to get [over a baby's skull." Kirkham then surprised Sims with a photo of

a dingo with the head of a baby-sized doll taken, crown first, with the canine teeth reaching to the doll's ears. Sims, staring at the photograph, could only concede that his earlier supposition might have been mistaken.

　　James Cameron was the final witness for the prosecution. Cameron, a professor of forensic medicine, testified that Azaria was killed by "a cutting instrument across the neck, or around the neck" held by a human. He exhibited to the jury slides of Azaria's clothing taken in his laboratory with ultra-violet light which he believed showed the pattern of bloodied fingers. Cross-examination focused attention on previous cases in which Cameron's pro-prosecution testimony had helped incriminate what turned out to be innocent suspects.

　　On October 13, the defense began its case. John Phillips ended his opening statement by pointing to the witness stand and saying, "I call Mrs. Chamberlain."

　　Tears slid down Lindy's face as she described the clothing her daughter was wearing the last night she laid her down: "She had a white knitted Marquis jacket, with a pale lemon edging." Phillips asked Lindy to place her index finger next to Cameron's exhibit which, the professor claimed, showed bloodied fingers. The point became obvious, when spectators realized that the print made by so-called bloodied fingers showed four phalanges, while Lindy Chamberlain, and virtually every other human on the planet, have only three.

　　Much of Ian Barker's cross-examination of Lindy was devoted to poking holes in her story about seeing a dingo in the vicinity of the family tent. He asked her to explain how a dingo, shaking a bleeding baby, would not have left large quantities of blood in and around the tent. He also challenged the defendant to account for the fetal blood which his experts claimed to have found in the family car. Lindy resisted saying, "I'm not going to speculate how it got there." Near the end of his long cross-examination Barker began asking "questions" that were really just statements for the jury. "Mrs. Chamberlain," the Queen's Counsel said at one point, "may I respectfully suggest to you that the whole [dingo] story is mere fantasy?"

　　More than two dozen defense witnesses followed Lindy to the stand. Several testified as to the Chamberlain's fine character and their grief over the loss of their daughter. Other witnesses told either of their own frightening encounters with Ayer's Rock dingoes, or testified in general about the aggressiveness of the region's wild dogs. In addition, eight defense forensic experts would attack the dubious tests or conclusions of the prosecution's experts, on subjects ranging from fiber to blood evidence.

　　The defense saw Professor Barry Boettcher as one of its most important forensic experts. Boettcher attacked Joy Kuhl's conclusions that the Chamberlain car contained significant quantities of fetal blood. In complicated testimony that might have flown right over the heads of the jurors, Boettcher tried to explain why Kuhl's testing method might have produced false positives for fetal blood. Later, another expert, Richard Nairn would also pile on Kuhl's results, arguing that the sheer number of Kuhl's tests was irrelevant: "Two hundred bad tests are poorer than one good test."

　　Some of the most riveting defense testimony came from defense dingo expert Les Harris contended that a dingo after prey the size of Azaria would "make seizure, which would be of the entire head, and it would close its jaws sufficiently to render the mammal immobile." It would be most unlikely to "hang around" with its prey, Harris contended. Harris said dingo kills in the field produce "very little" blood and that they characteristically shake their heads after taking prey "to break the neck."

　　Except for one recalled expert, the last defense witness was Michael Chamberlain. Ian Barker, in his cross-examination of Michael, focused heavily on the h

is actions in the first hours after Azaria's disappearance. Barker suggested that Michael's failure to ask Lindy certain questions, or to go running off into the brush in search of his daughter, was because he already knew Lindy had killed his daughter: "Could it be because you knew that the dingo did not take her, and that she was dead at the hands of your wife?" Michael answered, in a low voice, "No." Barker pushed hard: "The whole story is nonsense, and you know it." "No, Mr. Barker," Michael insisted again. Courtroom observers concluded that Chamberlain's testimony lacked spirit; it seemed both weary and inappropriately nonchalant. When his long hours on the stand finally ended, he took a seat in the courtroom next to his wife, and held her hands.

　　Phillips, in his summation, stressed that the prosecution failed to provide even a remotely plausible explanation as to why Lindy Chamberlain would want to kill her own child. "The prosecution has had two years and three months to think of a reason," he said, and "they can't."

　　Barker, summing for the Crown, admitted that no motive had been proved, but insisted that was neither the prosecution's intent or its job. "All the Crown says is that you should find the murder happened," Barker told the jury. He turned the tables by asking the jury to consider the lack of evidence that might suggest the dingo was guilty. "How could you possibly convict [the dingo] on this evidence?" he asked, noting the lack of dingo hairs or drag marks by the tent, the fact that no one saw it carrying a baby, and the relatively undamaged condition of Azaria's jumpsuit. "The case against the dingo would be laughed out of court," Barker concluded.

　　On October 28, 1982, Justice Muirhead instructed the jury——in a manner that generally pleased the defense. He reminded them that Sally Lowe distinctly remembered hearing a baby's cry coming from the Chamberlain's tent, and that if she was correct about that, then the prosecution's assertion that Azaria was at the time lying dead in the Chamberlain's car with her throat cut could not be true. Most journalists left the Darwin courtroom expecting an acquittal.

　　On October 29, at 8:37 pm, the foreman of the Chamberlain jury announced its verdict. The jury found Lindy guilty of murder, and Michael guilty of being an accessory after the fact. Across Australia, the jury's verdict was greeted mostly with approval and, in places ranging from a speedway in Perth to a bar in Darwin to a convention of dentists in Newcastle, with sustained applause. Reports later indicated that the jury was initially considerably more divided that its verdict indicated, having first split four for conviction, four for acquittal, and four undecided. (One juror later told the press, "It came down to whether you believed it was a dingo or not.")

　　Justice Muirhead sentenced Lindy to life in prison, but suspended Michael's sentence. "I consider it not only appropriate, but in the interests of justice to do so," he explained.

　　The Trial Aftermath

　　One month after beginning her sentence at Berrimah prison outside of Darwin, Lindy Chamberlain gave birth to a second daughter, which she Kahlia. "Let them try to make something out of that," she said.

　　Lindy regained some freedom, temporarily, when she was released on bail pending her appeal. Her appeal to the Federal Court was rejected, 3 to 0, in April of 1983. Ten months later, Australia's High Court also refused to set aside her conviction, on a 3 to 2 vote, and Lindy found herself back on Block J of Berrimah Prison.

　　As Lindy passed her days in a fortress on a ridge near Darwin, new reports casting doubt on the prosecution's scientific evidence helped spur a growing Free Lindy movement. Most damning of all the new reports was one showing that what the prosecution had claimed was the blood of a murdered child in the Chamberlain vehicle was in fact not even blood at all

——it was paint emulsion. Well over 100,000 Australia's signed petitions calling for her release. The country remained, however, deeply divided on the issue, with one poll showing 52% of the nation's residents believed her guilty of murder.

　　An English hiker named David Brett would, quite unintentionally, succeed in gaining Lindy's release after so many before him had failed. He did so in January 1986 by falling off Ayer's Rock during an evening climb and killing himself. Eight days after his accident, Brett's body was discovered below the bluff where he had lost his footing, in an area full of dingo lairs. As police scoured the area, looking for missing bones that might have been carried off by dingoes, they discovered a once white jacket of a baby: Azaria's missing matinee jacket.

　　Given the skepticism prosecutors had expressed for Lindy's story about the missing matinee jacket, there seemed little choice now. The Chief Minister ordered Lindy's release from prison. Wearing a pink frock and sunglasses, Lindy climbed into a limousine at the gates of Berrimah prison on February 7, 1986 and tried to begin a second life.

　　A judicial inquest followed Lindy's release from prison, and in this one former prosecution witnesses had a lot of explaining to do. In May 1987, Justice Trevor Morling issued a 379-page report critical of the investigatory techniques of Joy Kuhl, James Cameron, and other key prosecution witnesses in the trial. He put great weight on the credible accounts offered by the Chamberlain's fellow campers, noting: "It is extraordinary that the persons at the barbecue area at the time of and imme

┨网页设计特效库┠ http://www。z┗co⊙l。com/网页特效/