The useless witness

Compare the list of witnesses who appeared for the prosecution at the trial against the list of witnesses in the documents presented to the defence by the prosecution There have been an awful lot left out - and several of them seem to duplicate in vague terms the evidence given by other witnesses at the trial. Is this because these "useless witnesses " are less intelligent, less observant than those the prosecution picked to present to the court?

In many cases, not a bit of it. The police choose their witnesses from those who best support their case. They go back and re-interview them in the hope of making their case even better. If the witness remembers something new - and incriminating - another statement  taken. Trial are sometimes littered with witnesses who have given several statements. The defence try to set one of these statements off the evidence against another. It is a noble attempt - but they may be missing a trick.

Those witnesses who were not put on the prosecution list , those whose statements were a bit vague - they would almost certainly have been visited again by the police. But because they  did not have anything incriminating to add, because their memory of events was still a little awkward, the police did not take any second statements from them.    After all, if you have dug yourself into a hole, stop digging.

Go to see one of these witnesses and the response may well be something like - "At last! Somebody believes me -I kept telling them that  the car at the scene was yellow, not blue."

Now this may not constitute "fresh evidence", but it may firm up a lead towards real "fresh evidence".

What is useless to the police may be very useful to you.