Simon Hall was convicted of the murder of 79 year old Joan Albert in February 2003, and had his case referred back to the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in October 2009 following a series of submissions by the University of Bristol Innocence Project (UoBIP). The appeal was held in early December 2010 and judgment on whether Hall will have his conviction quashed will be announced this month.   Mr Hall’s case is the first case worked on by an Innocence Project in the UK that has been referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Gabe Tan, now Research Assistant in the School of Law and Assistant Director of the UoBIP, headed the investigation into Mr Hall’s claim of innocence throughout its time with the University of Bristol. As a law student she committed many hundreds of voluntary hours to produce various submissions to the CCRC over the years on the limitations of the fibre evidence claimed to link Mr Hall to the crime scene and the possible utility of new DNA techniques on biological samples found at the murder scene.

From the article:

"When the Innocence Project was asked to assist in Hall's case, our first impression was that this was a highly unusual case," says Gabe Tan ... She found that although the fibres found on Hall might have been "indistinguishable" from those found on the deceased's body, "indistinguishable" did not mean the fibres were an exact match: it simply meant the fibres could not be distinguished utilising the specific technique applied by the Forensic Science Service at the time. 

"The more we researched, the more concerns grew," continues Tan. "We learned that the fibres are easily transferable and susceptible to contamination, that they were not collected from Hall's addresses until six months after the murder."

Read more  in 'The Innocence Project: the court of last resort' (published Sunday, 9 January 2011)