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The Lab Report
Nobody
from the Attorney General's laboratory testified at the trial,
but Crown prosecutor Glenn Hays assured the jurors that the
experts there endorsed the findings of pathologist John Penistan.
Penistan insisted his analysis of the stomach made it a certainty
that Lynne was murdered between 7:00 and 7:45 pm.
OPP
inspector Harold Graham testified that it was not until he
received the laboratory report that Steve "became a strong
suspect." The judge later concluded: "I think I can properly
infer whatever was in the laboratory report clinched the matter."
What
exactly was in the report that "clinched" Steven's guilt?
Hays
never entered the crucial laboratory report into evidence.
And for good reason. Funk's report was only one page long.
It listed in detail what was inside Lynne's stomach. But it
said not a word about time of death:
The
implications are staggering. Imagine if Graham had claimed
on the basis of a phone call, he learned the lab had confirmed
a suspect's knife was the murder weapon, but then was unable
to produce a written lab report to back up that claim. He
would be laughed out of court. Yet that is exactly what Hays
pulled off with a much-talked about but never seen lab report
supposedly confirming time of death.
Read
more about the lab report in Chapter 30 of "Until you are
Dead".
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