His original conviction was overturned on appeal but a second trial resulted in another verdict of guilty after another prisoner claimed that Stone had confessed to the killings while on remand in jail. His most recent appeal, in 2004, also failed.

Murder

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 appalling head injuries, Josie survived and went on to make a full recovery.

Trial and consequences

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. Stone pleaded not guilty at his original trial in 1998 but was convicted on the strength of testimony from three witnesses who claimed that he had confessed to them while in jail. He was sentenced to life.

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 reform the 1983 Mental Health Act. Their proposal sought to reform the 1983 MHA's "treatibility test," which stated that only patients whose mental disorders were considered treatable could be detained. Because certain types of personality disorder are not considered treatable, patients with these conditions, including Michael Stone, could not be detained.

In response to the Michael Stone case and other widely publicized reports of mentally ill people committing atrocious crimes, the government wanted to allow those diagnosed with schizophrenia or personality disorders with a tendency towards violence to be detained against their will in mental health hospitals without having actually committed a crime. The reforms, ultimately enacted in 2007, changed the "treatability test" into an "appropriate medical treatment test." Under this new test, patients can be detained against their wishes as long as there is a medical treatment available to them that can alleviate or prevent the worsening of the disorder or one or more of its symptoms. There is no longer a requirement that treatments actually work, nor is there a requirement that patients participate in the treatment (ex: with taking therapies and other therapies that require active participation by the patient), merely that the treatment is considered appropriate, and is readily available to the patient.

Appeals and later developments

The Court of Appeal later ordered a retrial after a key prosecution witness went back on his evidence, but Stone was convicted a second time in 2001. Lawyers for Stone once again argued that his trial was not fair, this time because of the way the trial judge had summed up the case. Stone lost, and his life imprisonment term stands.

Michael Stone's conviction is still held by some to be a miscarriage of justice on the grounds that the evidence against him came from a prisoner in an adjoining cell who claimed that Stone had confessed by talking through a gap between the heating pipe and the wall between their cells. The prisoner who provided the evidence, Damien Daley, was described in court as a "career criminal". There was little forensic evidence available, and what there was (a few hairs, a bootlace, and a smudged fingerprint) could not be linked to Stone. However, Nigel Sweeney QC for the Crown, said that at the trial Daley had accepted "he was an individual who would lie when it suited him" but had nothing to gain by lying about Stone.

The jury were told by Nigel Sweeney QC that "we have to make you sure that Stone confessed" and so the jury tested the evidence of Damien Daley by actually visiting the cells in question where an extract from one of the Harry Potter stories was read out through the duct in the cell wall. The jury were able to listen to what was being read to them from the cell formerly occupied by Stone, which proved that it was possible for Stone to have confessed to Daley in the way he alleged.

Mr Williamn Clegg QC weakly defended by opining that "there was no proof the voice belonged to Stone".

The main issue however which forms the basis of the miscarriage of justice claim is that the jury were not told that the points of detail included in the confession had all been published in the national press on the day Stone was alleged to have confessed. They were told that Daley had been reading the Daily Mirror which contained some of the facts, but they were not told about the Daily Mail and The Times which had published the remaining facts.

On 21 December 2006, a High Court judge decided that Stone should spend at least 25 years in prison before being considered for parole. This means that he is likely to remain behind bars until at least 2023 and the age of 63. In September 2007 it was announced that The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is assessing if there is "any new evidence or anything to cast doubt on the safety of his convictions". CCRC spokeswoman said on Sunday: "His [Stone's] case file has been allocated to a case review manager."If there is any doubt over his convictions, then his case will be referred to the Court of Appeal. "We will look to consider whether there was anything that wasn't considered at trial or appeal." The spokeswoman added that the timescale for examining the case could be anything from a "few months to years".

On the 26th October 2010 the CCRC announced that they would not refer the case back to the Court of Appeal because they had found no new evidence to justify making a referral. They did not mention that the bootlace which had been dropped at the scene of the crime by the murderer, and which Stone had wanted to be re-examined to possibly identify a suspect who may have since been added to the DNA database, had been lost by the Kent police Exhibits Store. Only the exhibit bag previously containing the bootlace had been found, but the bootlace itself had gone missing.

Following the conviction of Levi Bellfield for two murders of young women (both in hammer attacks) and the attempted murder of a third (with the use of a vehicle) in February 2008, a website campaigning in favour of Michael Stone's innocence named Bellfield as a suspect for the Russell case, pointing out that Josie's description of the man fitted that of Bellfield and was quite different to the appearance of Michael Stone. A man fitting the description was also seen "panic stricken" and driving a Ford Orion in the country lanes around Chillenden on that fateful afternoon. Bellfield was also familiar with that part of Kent as he had friends living around there and also visited the area to trade drugs and also for work as a nightclub bouncer and wheel-clamper. However, it is unknown whether Bellfield ever owned or had access to the Ford Orion that was seen in the Chillenden area at the time of the murders.

Report

A report in to the murders for which Stone was convicted has made a number of criticisms of his care, including a failure to share information between agencies.

Stone 'lost in world of drugs'

BBC News