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Re St John, Elswick

Newcastle Consistory Court: Duff Ch, 12 December 2018 [2018] ECC New 4 Exhumation – criminal allegations – DNA testing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2019

Ruth Arlow*
Affiliation:
Chancellor of the Dioceses of Norwich and Salisbury
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Abstract

Type
Case Notes
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2019 

The petitioner sought a faculty for the temporary exhumation of the remains of her father-in-law, who had died in 1993, for the purposes of extracting a sample for DNA analysis. The petitioner's husband, who was the son of the deceased, had been convicted of two counts of rape which took place in the 1980s. The conviction was based entirely upon DNA evidence. The estranged daughter of the deceased had then come forward indicating that she did not believe that her brother had committed the offences, suggesting instead that her father may well have done so. The chancellor granted the faculty on the basis that even if there was a slight, but real, possibility that there had been a serious miscarriage of justice then it was wholly proper that everything be done to ensure that that was not the case. [RA]