Lundy loses appeal

An interesting read of the Court of Appeal decision dismissing the appeal by Mark Lundy over the murder of his wife and daughter.

Lundy lost on every ground raised, bar one. They found the mRNA evidence should not have been admitted. But they concluded that even without that the evidence was overwhelming.

Also of interest is that a journalist who covered the trial for North & South, Michael White, gave an affidavit in support of the appeal!

On the DNA evidence, the expert witness said:

So by that I mean that this DNA evidence is one million, million, million times more likely to occur if the DNA in these two samples from the polo shirt originated from Ms Christine Lundy, rather than from someone else unrelated to her and chosen at random from the general New Zealand population.

And the fact there was central nervous system tissue on the shirt was undisputed. The court found:

The conclusion that it was Mrs Lundy’s CNS tissue can then quite easily be reached in two small steps. First, on the night that the appellant was wearing the shirt, Mrs Lundy was murdered by having her head attacked with an axe with the consequence established in Dr Pang’s evidence that a significant portion of her brain was exposed and indeed missing from the skull cavity. Second, the only human DNA found in association with the CNS tissue was that of Mrs Lundy. It was of good quality and found in substantial amounts.

And the random burglar theory holds little weight:

The notion that the deceased were the victims of a random burglar was unlikely, for a combination of reasons. First, the savagery of the attack on both Mrs Lundy and her daughter. There were in each case a high number of very hard blows to the head. In the case of Mrs Lundy they had the effect of destroying much of her face and head. Further, Amber Lundy could not have been regarded as any kind of threat to a random burglar, as opposed to somebody she recognised in the course of the attack on her mother.

So Lundy remains in jail. His non-parole minimum was 20 years so he may get released after 2022.