Luke Mitchell
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Luke Mitchell (born July 1988) is the Scottish teenager convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Jodi Jones in June 2003.
On June 30, 2003, fourteen-year-old Jodi Jones was found brutally murdered in Dalkeith, Scotland. Her body was along a path through some woods, and she had been subjected to what prosecutors would later describe in court as a "savage knife attack." Her mutilated body had been found by Mitchell and the Jones family who were leading a search for her after she had failed to return home. Jodi had set out to visit Luke Mitchell, her boyfriend, and Mitchell himself was one of many local people taking part in the search. The fact that Mitchell discovered the body very quickly and that the search was at night and in poor weather would later play a major part in the criminal investigation.
Eventually Mitchell was arrested and charged with the crime. At his trial at the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh he pleaded Not Guilty. During the 42-day trial which followed the jury heard evidence from both Mitchell's mother and brother as well as visiting the crime scene. The evidence of Shane Mitchell was crucial as it contradicted the alibi his brother gave as part of his defence. The trial is the longest of a single accused in Scottish legal history.
On January 21, 2005, the Jury found him guilty after just 5 hours. Mitchell, aged sixteen at the time of his conviction, was condemned as being "truly wicked" by Judge Lord Nimmo Smith. He was also found guilty of a separate charge of supplying cannabis.
Mitchell's sentencing took place on February 11, 2005. Nimmo Smith told Mitchell that he would spend a minimum of 20 years in prison before being considered for parole.
Mitchell was a fan of Marilyn Manson and had reportedly taken a keen interest in The Black Dahlia case of 1947, an unsolved homicide whereby an aspiring young actress was found murdered and mutilated in Los Angeles. Mitchell described himself as a Goth and scribbled Satanic symbols on his schoolbooks. As well as dealing in cannabis he was reportedly a heavy user of the drug. However, his supposed gothic outlook may well be questionable, considering the information provided by the media is of a nature that has resulted in many misconceptions in the past.
It was stated during the trial that Mitchell's clothes may have been destroyed in a garden incinerator and neighbours noted a strange smell coming from the garden. Also during the trial, a mock up of the wall at the crime scene was made. Mitchell went through a distinctive "V"-shaped hole in one part of the wall to find the body, claiming that a family dog had alerted him to something suspicious. This was challenged by members of the 'search team' and the Prosecution stated that only the killer could have known the exact location of Jodie's body. Along with the testimony of Shane Mitchell, these facts seemed to form the main basis of the prosecution.
The mock-up wall was erected in the Laigh Hall, below Parliament Hall within Parliament House, across the road from The High Court of Justiciary building in Edinburgh's Old Town, where the trial was being heard.
The lack of DNA evidence and alleged interest in satanism and Marilyn Manson have led critics to believe that Luke was found guilty more so because of his taste in music and clothes, 'hardly abnormal in a rebellious teenager', than because there was hard evidence against him. A website has also noted that quotations written on Mitchell's school folders such as 'I have tasted the Devil's Green Blood', have been influenced by computer game monologue and are not satanic verse as indicated to the jury.
In March 2006, Luke was granted leave to appeal against his conviction (and his length of sentence) at the High Court of Justiciary sitting as the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh, on the grounds of the trial judge's refusal to hear the original case outside of the city.
In November 2006, Luke Mitchell won the right to appeal against his conviction for murder. Mitchell's legal team had wanted a number of grounds for appeal to be heard but the judges said only one would be allowed. Scotland's senior judge, the Lord Justice General, Lord Hamilton said they would allow a ground of appeal claiming that the trial judge erred in refusing to move Mitchell's case out of Edinburgh following publicity ahead of the proceedings. Lord Hamilton, who was sitting with Lord Kingarth and Lord MacLean, said: "We have come, with some hesitation, to the view that this ground is arguable." "There is an argument that the trial judge failed adequately to take into account the circumstances that the publicity might have had an impact of particular strength not only in the immediate locality of the crime but in a somewhat wider area embracing the city of Edinburgh and other towns in the Lothians," he said. There was a huge media fanfare surrounding the trial and this may have affected the final outcome. The fact that the jury were not put into a hotel for the night of the decision has also been cited as a factor.
