Court Trial

At his trial at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, Mitchell pleaded not guilty and lodged a special defence of alibi: that he was at home cooking dinner at the time of the murder. He did not testify.
Prosecution case

A woman testified that she had seen someone resembling Mitchell near the murder scene.

Mitchell was seen as having “guilty knowledge”; in finding the body, the prosecution said he had demonstrated that he already knew where it was. A witness claimed seeing two people resembling Mitchell and Jones at the Easthouses end of the path around 4.50pm with another two witnesses claiming to see Mitchell at the Newbattle end 50 minutes later. Mitchell’s brother testified that he had been viewing internet pornography in the house at the time Mitchell said he had been there; under cross-examination Mitchell’s brother said he would only have done this if he thought the house to be otherwise empty, and also said that he had not seen Mitchell in the house that afternoon, thereby failing to corroborate Mitchell’s defence of being in the family home at the time of the murder.

The prosecution also believed Mitchell had taken an interest in the Black Dahlia case. A knife pouch was found in Mitchell’s home on which he had marked “JJ 1989 – 2003” and “The finest day I ever had was when tomorrow never came”. The prosecution said it would be unlikely for anyone but the killer to remember someone killed with a knife in this way.[30] The missing knife was never recovered. According to the prosecution, Mitchell’s clothes were destroyed in an 11-inch (280 mm) diameter garden log burner later that night. His mother Corrinne bought him a new coat and denied the existence of his previous one.
Defence arguments

No genetic material from Mitchell, which could not be “innocently explained”, was found on her body. Jodi’s DNA was found on Mitchell’s trousers but this could have occurred through an “innocent transfer”. One hundred and twenty-two items taken from the murder scene from which attempts to obtain DNA profiles proved unsuccessful.[33] No forensic evidence was recovered from the incinerator. Mitchell was the subject of intense press coverage before his trial.

In response to the prosecution accusation that only prior knowledge could have explained the way Mitchell was able to discover the body lying in an area behind a wall, lawyers for Mitchell said he had been aided by his dog. To allow the jury to explore the plausibility of these claims, a mock-up wall was erected in the Laigh Hall, below Parliament Hall within Parliament House, where the trial was being heard. A visit by the jury to the murder scene was also arranged.
Verdict and sentence

On 20 January 2005, the jury began their deliberations; these deliberations concluded the following day. On 21 January, the jury found Mitchell guilty by a majority verdict of Jones’s murder after a total of five hours of deliberation. He was also found guilty of supplying cannabis. The trial had taken 42 days, a record at the time for a single person upon trial in Scotland.

Upon receipt of the jury’s verdict, Judge Lord Nimmo Smith informed Mitchell: “It lies beyond any skill of mine to look into the black depths of your mind; I can only look at what you have done. You have been convicted of a truly evil murder—one of the most appalling crimes that any of us can remember—and you will rightly be regarded as wicked.” Mitchell’s sentencing was delayed in order for the minimum term he should serve before being considered for release could be determined. On 11 February 2005. Judge Smith informed Mitchell that he would spend a minimum of 20 years in prison before being considered for parole.