What happened in the first trial is straightforward. After the trial had been running for a week it was decided that it was necessary for some of the experts to carry out further investigation of the wreckage. This would take time and the delay could have caused difficulties for the jury. The trial judge very sensibly decided that it was better to discharge the jury and start afresh once the work had been carried out.
As for the other comments you assume that the AAIB got it right. The Jury heard from an AAIB inspector. The AAIB don't always get it right and, for example, had miscalculated the weight and balance for the aircraft believing it was overweight and out of CofG when it wasn't. I'm not going to criticise the AAIB inspector involved; he had only looked at part of the evidence and there was other conflicting evidence. In addition I don't believe that he was the one who had dealt with W and B.
India Two Four -
A number of those statements made in the AAIB report were incorrect and had not been thoroughly examined. As an example the retired airline pilot who it was claimed had seen the fatal 'loop' had clearly seen the first loop and not the fatal manoeuvre as the timings simply did not fit. She had seen the aircraft perform 3/4 of a loop before trees obscured her view without it having departed from controlled flight. This could not have been the failed loop claimed by the AAIB and the prosecution. Great reliance was placed upon her evidence as she was a "highly experienced and credible witness" however no one had ever properly investigated her evidence until she was cross-examined.
The jury also heard from a number of other highly qualified experts and rejected the suggestion that the pilot had been flying a loop. This contention was not born out by a close analysis of the available GPS evidence nor reconstruction flights carried out by a number of different experts.
The prosecution case was largely brought on the strength of a prosecution flying expert who conceded during the course of the trial that he had made a number of errors. The prosecution largely ended up abandoning him as a witness which left them with not very much of a case. Had it not been for this "expert's" original opinion this case would probably not have been brought.
Last edited by Legalapproach; 13th May 2015 at 06:38.