Decision awaited on Barlow pardon plea

Nearly 18 months after being told the FBI had discredited testing used to convict John Barlow of an execution-style double murder, the Ministry of Justice has still made no decision on pardoning him.

Barlow was convicted at his third trial on the February 1994 shootings of businessman Eugene Thomas and his son Gene in Wellington, after a United States FBI ballistics expert provided forensic evidence using lead content tests to match crime scene bullets with those in a box belonging to Barlow.

He is now serving a life sentence.

The FBI has since stopped its bullet-testing practice after scientific criticism, and lawyer Greg King made an application for a royal pardon for Barlow on March 30 last year.

- NZPA