Stage 9 - Process of elimination

This step is about interviewing people that were witnesses and getting some final pieces of information. This is one of the final steps and it is about gathering all the evidence together such as information, questions with people, weapon evidence and statements of witnesses. Then certain questions must be asked such as ‘ What does the evidence show?’ and ‘what can I conclude from my statements’ From this the judgement should be made whether an elimination will occur or not. 
After conducting interviews the suspects may be bailed to return to the police station at a specified date, this allows the investigating officer more time to make further inquiries. at the end of the investigation there are three main outcomes for the suspect:

1. Suspect is charged - suspect is formally told that they will be sent to court and what law they are alleged to have broke etc.
2. cautioned - an official warning may be given in some circumstances. if the suspect is brought to court in the next three years then the caught can take this warning into account when sentencing them.
3. No further action is taken -if there in not enough evidence to charge or caution the suspect then no further action will be taken by the police and the suspect is eliminated from the case.

This stage is very crucial to the investigation because its when we have most of the evidence in order to charge someone however suspects can be eliminated if there isnt enough evidence which is where ethics comes in, you need to treat each suspect the same, an officer may believe that a certain suspect has committed the crime but you cant charge someone if there isn't enough evidence which is why everyone has to be treated equally. media can also play a huge part in this case as people opinions can involved and try to eliminate someone if people believe they haven't done it such as protests being held etc. eliminating suspects can benefit the investigation by taking all the focus of those suspects and being able to focus on finding more evidence and solving the case. This stage is probably one of the most significant because without it they wouldn’t come to a conclusion of who the criminal is and take action on them. If they didn’t do this step a criminal could be left on the loose for a while and cause ethical issues such as people becoming distressed wondering where this criminal is and when a case is left for a while it makes it more difficult to find out more evidence on it. Because of it causing ethical issues it means that the investigation will try to be performed quicker and by rushing an investigation it could mean that they are not looking properly for evidence and this could cause them to overlook and make a judgement on the wrong person. This stage helps to make a successful investigation because by going through evidence and eliminating pieces of evidence that can’t be used it makes it clearer who the evidence matches up to and allows them to sort the evidence out ready for reporting it to court.

When the soham murder case was first raised Huntley wasn't thought of as a suspect, on the TV due to the media you saw Huntley looking for the girls and even having interviews and was on the TV helping, its only when a police officer found it strange as to why he was so involved in the case which was helped by the media and the way he was seen on TV as people started to study is bod language, so his house was searched, when the girls man united t-shirts where found it was then seen as Huntley to be the prime suspect. However why wasn't Huntley already in prison due to his previous convictions, he had a great deal of previous convictions which after made everyone question why he wasn't in prison. There weren't any other suspects in this case. This stage of the case was handled well because 13 days after the girls were reported missing Huntley was found out to be the murderer making this stage handled well. Maxine Carr also became a suspect for being involved in the murders, Carr was also seen being interviewed on the news which due to the interview and how she was acting sparked an investigation into Maxine Carr where police found she was in a relationship with Ian Huntley, she was also linked because she was the girls teachers. so a link was formed between maxine carr and ian huntley and they because the suspects. the previous stages all brought this stage together as all the facts and evidence was gathered which helped to determine the suspects.