Trial judge misdirected jury on ‘blood’ evidence

Clive Knights

At a hearing of the appeal filed by Clive Knights to his conviction and 57-year sentence for the murder of insurance company executive Bert Whyte, his attorney Dexter Todd is challenging the purported “blood” evidence” led in the case.

Arguing that the state failed to lead any conclusive forensic evidence substantiating the presence of suspected blood as alluded to by one of its witnesses, counsel contended that trial judge Navindra Singh ought to have directed the jury accordingly.

Todd said that though the police witness had testified to seeing two spots of what “appeared to have been blood” at the crime scene, the trial judge in his summation of the case to the jury directly and definitively said that “it was blood.”