Trial By Water, Episode 3: The star witnesses – and the problem with memory evidence

In the third episode of Trial By Water, we look at the human elements of the case against Robert Farquharson – what people saw and heard, and what they told the jury.

The prosecution of Farquharson for the murder of his three sons, by driving his car into a dam in 2005, had six main threads, each bolstering the other.

Listen now in the player below.

When DNA evidence became available in the 1990s, and exposed a series of wrongful convictions, it had an unexpected consequence. In these wrongful conviction cases, it was often found that witnesses had been prepared to swear in court to things they could not possibly have seen.

And what researchers discovered was that memory evidence was really problematic.

This episode looks at the memory evidence provided by two of the prosecution’s star witnesses: Greg King, a friend of Farquharson’s who told police that Farquharson had outlined the plot to kill his sons just months prior; and Dawn Waite, who came forward four years after the incident to claim she had seen Farquharson driving erratically on the night of the crash, and watched him veer off the road towards the dam.

If you’re new to this podcast series, catch up on Episodes 1 and 2 below.