Footballer cleared of Burglary despite DNA link

by Mike Russell - Esher News and Mail - 7th August 2002.

AN amateur footballer has been cleared by a crown court jury of breaking into an Elmbridge sports club, despite being linked to the scene via DNA.

Renford Johnson, 33, had been charged with breaking into the Strenue Sports Club in Thames Ditton on July 15, 2001.

A cigarette butt was found in a changing room with his DNA on it.

However,   at  Guildford Crown Court last week, two team-mates testified that Mr Johnson had been at the club three months earlier to play in a football match.

Jamie Manooch and Daniel Jones told the jury that they had played in an evening match in April with Mr Johnson in which all three had smoked cigarettes at the club.

After listening to the evidence during the two-day trial, the jury accepted the explana‚tion that Mr Johnson's cigarette butt was found in the dressing room because he had played football there and not because he had broken into the club in July.

Opening the case, prosecutor Richard Crabtree described the Strenue Sports Club in Lynwood Road as "a rather dilapidated establishment".

Mr   Crabtree   added: "Changing room number five is important because it was in there that a cigarette butt was discovered,  which,  when examined, was found to have the defendant's DNA on it."

Giving evidence, Roger May, chairman of the sports club, said vandals had plagued the ground and the building. He added that he was called to the club during the evening of July 15 by the alarm company and the police were also contacted.

"The bar is the only part of the building which is alarmed and when I looked around it seemed that someone had tried to force the door to the bar open with a garden fork," Mr May told the court.

Mr Crabtree alleged that Mr Johnson had climbed on to the clubhouse's flat roof, into a water tower and then kicked in the ceiling to the women's toilets to get into the building.

The jury was told that nothing was taken in the break-in and that the intruder was almost certainly disturbed when the alarm went off.

Both Mr Jones and Mr Manooch were accused by Mr Crabtree of being "coached" through their evidence and using "teamwork" to try to help Mr Johnson's defence.

However, both men denied they had manufactured the story and Mr Manooch said he felt partly responsible for Mr Johnson's predicament.

He added: "I took him along to the game. He came because we were short of players for an important game. It was inconvenient for him and he has ended up being accused of this."