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Michael Stone (Russell Murder Case)Michael Stone (born Michael John Goodban in 1960) is a British criminal who was convicted of a notorious double-murder in 1996. His original conviction was overturned on appeal but a second trial resulted in another verdict of guilty, although some still regard his conviction as unsafe. On July 9, 1996, in a country lane in Kent, Lin Russell, aged forty-five, and her two daughters, six-year-old Megan and nine-year-old Josie, were tied up and savagely beaten with a hammer. Lin and Megan were killed but, despite apalling head injuries, Jodie survived and went on to make a full recovery. Josie's recovery and the way she and her father, Shaun Russell, coped with the aftermath of the tragedy were the subject of a BBC documentary. The crime received a great deal of publicity and in July 1997 police arrested and charged thirty-seven-year-old Michael Stone with the crimes. He pleaded Not Guilty at his original trial in 1998 but was convicted and sentenced to life. The Court of Appeal later ordered a retrial, and he was convicted a second time in 2001. In January, 2005 his lawyers argued successfully that his trial was not fair, and the case was referred back to the appeals court for a third time. He lost that appeal. Michael Stone's conviction is still held by some to be a miscarriage of justice as most of the evidence against him came from a fellow prisoner who claimed that Stone had confessed to the crimes. The prisoner who provided the evidence, Damien Daley, was described in court as a 'career criminal', and there was little physical evidence linking Stone to the crime. It was later determined that Stone had previous convictions and had been diagnosed as a psychopath, and in the light of his conviction the Labour government suggested a plan to incacerate those diagnosed as psychopaths without them having committed a crime. As British law stands at the moment, those with personality disorders cannot be held against their will if they have not committed a crime, unlike those with a mental illness; the basis for this is that personality disorders are not regarded as treatable. This proposal was later dropped as many people were wary of a plan to lock up people without them having committed a crime, particularly as a diagnosis of personality disorder can often be quite subjective. External links * Article from the Daily Mail questioning conviction
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