Bamber, Jeremy

Jeremy Bamber was convicted in October 1986 of murder and received a sentence of life imprisonment.

The CCRC inherited an application for review of the conviction from the Home Office in March 1997.

At trial, the jury considered whether Mr Bamber had shot five members of his family, as argued by the prosecution, or whether Mr Bamber’s sister, Sheila Caffell, might have shot the other four victims before shooting herself, as contended by the defence.

The prosecution had told the court that a silencer had been used and that traces of blood on the silencer were found by the blood grouping tests then available to have been compatible with Ms Caffell but none of the other victims.

It was part of the prosecution case that if the silencer was contaminated with Ms Caffell’s blood when she was shot, it was impossible that she could also have been the person who pulled the trigger.

During review, the CCRC obtained new expert DNA evidence indicating that the blood on the silencer could not have derived from Ms Caffell but could have come from one of the other victims.

The CCRC considered that this evidence undermined the prosecution’s argument as presented to the jury and to which the trial judge gave considerable emphasis in his summing up.

The CCRC referred the conviction in March 2001.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction in December 2002.