Kenyon, Julie

Julie Kenyon was convicted in July 2003 of murder and received a sentence of life imprisonment.

The CCRC received an application for review of the conviction in October 2003.

Ms Kenyon had been convicted of the murder of her grandmother, six years after her grandmother’s death had been recorded as due to natural courses.

The case against Ms Kenyon depended solely on confessions she was said to have made to her mother, sister, and a family friend.

In police interview Ms Kenyon denied killing her grandmother and stated that in the years after her grandmother’s death she had been consistently accused of murder.

Ms Kenyon denied confessing to a family friend but said that she had “confessed'” to her mother in order to hurt her, and to her sister because it is what she believed her sister wanted to hear.

Ms Kenyon was convicted on the basis of these alleged confessions.

During review, the CCRC obtained fresh expert psychiatric evidence indicating that Ms Kenyon suffered from psychiatric vulnerabilities that made her unusually suggestible and compliant, and that therefore her confessions were unreliable.

The CCRC concluded that had these expert reports been available at trial, the judge may have excluded the confessions as inadmissible.

Alternatively, the jury might not have reached the same verdict had it been given this new information.

The CCRC referred the conviction in December 2008.

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction in May 2010.