The great misleader

In my intermittent career as an expert witness, I have observed that the most eminent men make the worst witnesses. Speaking from the lonely heights of their professional pre-eminence, they sometimes claim that what undoubtedly happened could not have happened, and what could not have happened undoubtedly did happen. Their intellectual distinction and busy schedules excuse them, in their own opinion, from the tiresome necessity to read the documents of the case with minute attention.

Sir Bernard Spilsbury was the most eminent British forensic pathologist of his day, which is to say from Dr Crippen to the outbreak of the second war. The subject of a hagiographical biography whose paperback version is to be found in every second-hand bookshop in the country, he is now the subject of a book that is equal and opposite in its assessment of him. By the end of it, not much of his reputation remains.

Spilsbury was physically but not academically distinguished. He published next to nothing, but his manner in court, quiet and confident, led (or misled) judges and juries alike to think he was a Daniel come to judgment. He presented fairly wild hypotheses as facts, and claimed to be able to distinguish things, such as the precise timing of bruises, that were not in fact distinguishable. As a result, many men were convicted of murder, and executed, who might otherwise have been acquitted on the grounds of reasonable doubt.

Ironically enough, Spilsbury’s infrequent forays into defence work allowed men who were probably guilty to get away with it. For example, he helped to secure a not proven guilty verdict in Scotland in the case of Donald Merrett, a young psychopath who almost certainly shot his mother dead to inherit her money.