The following are matters of public record, having been heard within the trial.
There is a time period of 80 seconds between the last use of SINDEN’S phone, and the time of the report to Kent Police of the collision. This does not account for time spent with the BT operator, which could not be ascertained by the police investigators.
SINDEN gave an account to police in interview during which he stated that he drove from his mother’s house, to the junction with Station Road, where he turned right. He emphatically denied using his mobile phone past the junction, having thrown it onto his passenger seat. He further stated that objects within his van fell onto the phone, and clearly suggested that those items caused the activations on his phone.
SINDEN’S legal position was maintained up until the trial. During the trial, an expert demonstrated that the phone activations suggested by SINDEN were highly unlikely.
The exact time of the collision was unknown, and could not be proved.
Daniel was visible from 150 - 160 metres away; certainly within 55 metres.
Daniel was wearing black/dark blue cycling clothing, but he was wearing shorts and his lower legs would have been light in colour and more visible, particularly as they were moving.
The Highway Code says the stopping distance at 40mph is 36 metres
The speed of SINDEN’S vehicle could not be scientifically proved at any time.
SINDEN stopped his vehicle 125 metres past the collision scene.
There was no forensic evidence presented to the jury by the defence that proved that Daniel Squire had been on the kerb. The prosecutor raised the question, and the jury was directed to consider by the judge, whether an experienced rider such as Daniel would have attempted to ride on a footpath that was about one foot wide, was overgrown, and strewn with debris. There were no marks in the mud leading to the footpath, nor marks in the debris or muddy tyre marks on the path.
At no time, before the trial, did SINDEN explain to the police that Daniel rode off of the kerb into the road. In fact, he stated to several witnesses at the scene that he simply ‘did not see’ Daniel. In one account he even stated that Daniel swerved out in front of him, apparently to avoid a drain cover, and that he (SINDEN) had swerved to try to avoid him but was unable to do so.
When SINDEN hit Daniel, he was 0.67 metres away from the kerb; so how close was SINDEN to the kerb before he swerved? Even the defence expert stated that Daniel should have been seen by SINDEN, assuming that he had been in the road, and not coming off the path.
Apparently, at no point before the trial, did SINDEN tell the police that he stopped in a layby to send and receive texts. The time he says he spent in the layby conveniently accounts mathematically for time that he could not previously account for. The judge drew the attention of the jury to this fact during her summing up.
What is clear is this; SINDEN presented an explanation to the police that investigations indicated he was using his phone at or immediately before the collision. Once he was faced with evidence IN COURT that indicated that his explanation of the phone activation (by articles on his seat) was unlikely, he decided to change his story. He then admitted in court that he HAD been using his mobile phone, but that he had been doing so further down the road, but not at the time of the collision.
The judge accurately summed up all of the evidence presented by the CPS, and drew the attention of the jury to the changes in SINDEN’S account. She was explicit about the timings and distances involved.
Many have commented about the CPS lawyer, what about the defence? They simply presented several ‘what if’s?’ to the jury, and then sat back. They knew what couldn’t be proved, and so threw as much mud around as possible to confuse the jury. The defence lawyer was spoken to by the judge several times because of his behaviour, and he was blatantly dishonest when he told the jury that the CPS had put in an extra charge of careless driving because the police weren’t sure of their case; in fact the judge put the extra charge in following a legal ruling from another case. But it sounds good doesn’t it?
The article at
https://beyondthekerb.wordpress.com/2015/03/21/somethings-not-quite-right-here/is pretty accurate, apart from the timing (80 seconds, not 55) and the punctuation (no full stops between the words in the text). But the issue here is that SINDEN was caught by his own story, and then changed it in court to account for the timings. It seems that all of the questions raised by BTK were dealt with in court.
In fact, all of the questions raised here on KoL were presented to the court; the jury simply had to do as the judge told them and apply some common sense. And there, perhaps, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, lies the problem.
