Scotland: After 17 years of insisting he was no murderer, man is finally cleared

Another evidence coverup by the prosecution

A convicted murderer who spent 17 years protesting his innocence was finally cleared by appeal judges yesterday. Stuart Gair, 42, had his conviction quashed after it was ruled he suffered a miscarriage of justice because of a failure to disclose crucial witness statements to his lawyers at his trial. Lord Abernethy said it meant "the defence were deprived of a powerful argument on the crucial issue of identification". After walking from court a free man, Mr Gair said: "I am shattered, absolutely shattered. I am still shaking."

He was found guilty, after a five-day trial at the High Court in Glasgow in 1989, of murdering Peter Smith, who was stabbed in the chest in North Court Lane in Glasgow city centre. Mr Smith, a former soldier, from West Plean, Stirlingshire, died later in hospital. Mr Gair denied murder and put forward a defence of alibi, maintaining that he was in another part of Glasgow at the time. But he was convicted on a majority verdict and sentenced to life imprisonment. He has maintained his innocence ever since and campaigners rallied to his cause. Eventually, his case was sent to the appeal court by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review, which was set up to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice. Mr Gair had previously petitioned the Scottish Secretary over his case and was freed on bail in 2000.

The question of identification was the key issue at the trial and lawyers acting for Mr Gair argued that, crucially, the Crown had failed to disclose important information to his defence before or at the trial. During the trial, a witness, Brian Morrison, who was 19 at the time, identified Mr Gair and his former co-accused as two men he saw come out of public toilets and go in the direction of North Court Lane. In an initial statement, he said he would definitely be able to identify the two men he had seen and that one of them had threatened him. But later he told officers: "I have to tell you that a lot of what I have already told the police is not the truth and I made up some of it to attract attention to myself."

Mr Gair's defence counsel, Gordon Jackson, QC, argued that if this information had been available to his lawyers at the trial, Mr Morrison could have been cross-examined in such a way as to show that the jury could not trust a word he said. A note had been attached to Crown papers for the trial which said that at one point Mr Morrison had signed himself into a psychiatric hospital. It went on "Morrison and his vivid imagination certainly set the police off on the trail of a red herring initially." Mr Jackson argued that all this information had been available to the Crown, but the defence had received none of it.

The Crown accepted before the appeal that the four statements given by Mr Morrison should have been disclosed to the defence but argued that no miscarriage of justice had resulted from the failure to do so. It was claimed that, even without the testimony of Mr Morrison, there was still "ample evidence" to conclude that no miscarriage of justice had resulted. Lord Abernethy, who heard the appeal with Lord Kingarth and Lord Sutherland, said: "Morrison was a very important witness even if not an essential one."

The main witness for the prosecution was Mr Gair's former co-accused, William McLeod, but he was described as "an appalling witness". Lord Abernethy said the Crown had relied on Mr Morrison's evidence to show that Mr Gair was in the lane and invited the jury to accept that evidence as credible and reliable. He said: "In our opinion, there is no doubt that all four of Morrison's police statements should have been disclosed to the defence. These statements showed that Morrison was prepared to tell lies, to fantasise and to change his account when it suited him." The information that he had been a patient at Leverndale Hospital should also have been made available.

Lord Abernethy said: "If the defence had that information, there is no doubt in our minds that they would have used it. "It would have painted a completely different picture of Morrison from the one the jury was presented with and would have tended dramatically to undermine the credibility and reliability of his evidence and, in particular, his identification evidence. "Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that with that information the defence could have destroyed his testimony."

Lord Abernethy said it was not possible to say that, without Mr Morrison's evidence, the jury would still have convicted Mr Gair. He went on: "In these circumstances, we have come to the conclusion that the non-disclosure of these police statements and other information resulted in a miscarriage of justice."

Report here



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