Scottish Prosecutors 'blocking' appeal in murder case

Lawyer says Crown Office has withheld evidence that could clear his client after 30 years in jail

The lawyer representing Glasgow lorry driver Thomas Ross Young - who has served 30 years in Peterhead jail for killing bakery worker Frances Barker - says his bid to overturn his client's sentence is being obstructed by the Crown Office. Despite claims last month by Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini, in the Scottish Parliament, that the Crown Office had supplied information to aid the case against Young's 1977 conviction, his solicitor says he has received no material and no information of any kind that could help his client. Requests for access to any evidence that could help his client have also been rejected.

'I know there is material which undermines my client's conviction and I am being denied access to that,' solicitor John McLeod told The Observer. 'This a very worrying affair with serious implications for justice in Scotland. It was quite misleading to suggest in the Scottish Parliament that information had been given to me to help our case.'

A violent sexual inadequate who admitted using prostitutes, Young was accused of killing Barker in June 1977 after she had been abducted by a kerb crawler near her home in Maryhill Road, Glasgow. Her battered, strangled corpse was eventually discovered in a wood in Glenboig, Lanarkshire. Although Young protested his innocence throughout his trial, it took the jury at the High Court in Glasgow only an hour to return a guilty verdict on 26 October, 1977. He was jailed for a minimum of at least 30 years, the longest sentence ever imposed by a Scottish judge.

However, in 2005 an FBI profiler - asked by Strathclyde police to look at a series of murders of young women, including Barker, in the Seventies - concluded that one man was responsible for all of them. Crucially several of the women had been killed after Young had been jailed. This evidence had been gathered as part of last month's failed prosecution of Angus Sinclair for the World's End murders of Christine Eadie and Helen Scott but was never presented in court. It clearly implicated Sinclair in all the murders, including that of Barker - who lived only 40 yards from Sinclair's house - and suggested Young was innocent.

'I first learned there were doubts about Young's involvement in Barker's murder in 2005 when police asked if they could re-interview my client,' added McLeod. 'They asked him if he had really killed her. Yet that was supposed to have been established in the High Court in 1977. So why ask now? As for my client, he vehemently denied killing Barker.'

Later two officers involved in the World's End murder investigation told McLeod of the existence of evidence that linked Sinclair to Barker's murder and which suggested Young had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. 'I then approached the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission and the Crown Office and asked to see this evidence. In both cases I was refused access to it, despite its immense importance to my client,' added McLeod.

When asked by The Observer why Angiolini had claimed that help had been provided to Young's solicitors, a Crown Office spokesperson said that it had indeed been given. 'We told Strathclyde police to tell Young's solicitors of the existence of new evidence that was important to Young's conviction for Barker's murder.' This statement did not impress McLeod, however. 'Basically they are telling me evidence exists that can help my client, but that I cannot find out what it is. To say this is assisting my client's appeal is extremely misleading. It is no use whatsoever, in fact.'

Young's case was further confused by a decision to charge him, on 23 September this year, with the murder of 17-year-old Patricia McAdam near Annan, Dumfries, in 1967. 'They have no body, no new evidence and no DNA to link Young with this case,' added McLeod. 'Yet they have decided to charge him. It is an utterly cynical move.'

A major problem affecting the Young case is that the authorities do not know what to do with him, said one senior legal source. Young is now 72 years old and suffers from a series of debilitating heart and blood illnesses. Caring for him in the community will be very difficult. In addition, if he is released, and if his appeal against his conviction for the Barker murder is upheld, Young would be due to receive a massive sum in compensation for his wrongful conviction. 'It would be so much simpler if Young was to die in jail,' said the source. 'That would make things so much easier for the authorities.'

Report here



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