Sir, Your article suggesting that Dr Crippen may have been innocent of murdering his wife (Oct 17) reignites the controversy of which I first became aware as a medical student at the Royal London Hospital more than 50 years ago.

At the trial in 1910, an abdominal scar convinced the jury that the remains were those of Mrs Crippen. Professor Turnbull, of The London Hospital, had claimed that the scar was due to a fold in the skin caused after death, but Sir Bernard Spilsbury of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, speaking for the prosecution, claimed that this was an appendix scar: at that time this was quite a rare operation, which Mrs Crippen was known to have undergone.

The more powerful voice of Sir Bernard Spilsbury prevailed, since his reputation as a prosecution witness (rather than an expert witness) was of the highest. Professor Camps of The London Hospital, himself a renowned forensic pathologist and prominent as a witness in many murder cases, claimed that he had re-examined the slide and was convinced that Turnbull was right and Spilsbury wrong.

It appears to have taken a further 50 years for DNA examination to show that a miscarriage of justice might have occurred. The case of Sally Clark and others only recently forced us to recognise that eminence does not ensure correctness, and an expert witness owes a duty to the court, not the client.

James Carne
London N6.

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