Wedding death conviction quashed
A man has been cleared of killing a wedding guest after a nine-year legal fight to have his conviction quashed.
Stewart Kidd, 27, had already served his seven-year sentence for the culpable homicide of Thomas Blair in Dundee in March 1996.
But judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh ruled that he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
They said the Crown failed to disclose "contradictions" in police statements from a key witness at his trial.
Mr Kidd lost an earlier appeal but his case was referred back to the appeal court by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which was set up to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice.
Large knife
Lord Kirkwood, who heard the latest appeal with Lady Cosgrove and Lord Philip, said there were "materiel contradictions and inconsistencies" between the evidence given by a crucial witness - bride Pamela Carlyle - and statements she made to police before the trial.
In her first statement to police she had said that Mr Kidd had produced a large knife from the rear of his jeans and stabbed Mr Blair in the back.
However, in a later statement she said she now remembered that a second man with a knife was with Mr Kidd.
It was this man, identified as Jamie Green, who stabbed the deceased, she said.
Lord Kirkwood said: "Bearing in mind the fact that the Crown relied on the evidence of Pamela Carlyle, one of the two essential eyewitnesses, as being credible and reliable, we are of the opinion that disclosure of the statements which she made to the police would have been likely to have been of real importance to the defence."
Ample evidence
The statements would have tended to undermine the credibility of the evidence at the trial and cast reasonable doubt on the Crown case.
Mr Kidd originally stood trial as a 19-year-old, along with a co-accused, Green, for the murder of Mr Blair - the brother of Mrs Carlyle.
He was convicted on a majority verdict of culpable homicide along with Green.
Lord Kirkwood said that there was ample evidence at the trial that Green had stabbed the victim twice, if not three times.
But the Crown case against Mr Kidd relied on eyewitness testimony.
There was no forensic evidence to link him to the deceased or the weapon allegedly used.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/scotland/4274043.stm
Published: 2005/02/17 14:41:23 GMT
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