From The TimesMan cleared after 18 years' jail
December 7, 2005
Man cleared after 18 years' jail
By Shirley English
A MAN who was wrongly convicted of murdering a young mother after a detective lied at his trial has demanded a public inquiry into why he spent 18 years in jail.
George McPhee, now 50, was jailed for life in 1985, and ordered to spend at least 25 years behind bars for the murder of Elizabeth “Totsie” Sutherland, 36, at her home in Culbokie, Easter Ross.
The mother-of-two disturbed intruders ransacking her home in September 1984. She was stabbed several times in the chest and her throat was cut. Her body was found by her ten-year-old daughter when she arrived home from school.
Mr McPhee, of Immingham, Lincolnshire, was convicted of the murder but always protested his innocence. Yesterday his conviction was quashed at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh. Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Gill, sitting with Lord Nimmo Smith and Lord Osborne, said that he had suffered a “grave miscarriage of justice”, and had not had a fair trial. The judges said that evidence given by Detective Superintendent Andrew Lister, the senior investigating officer, had been crucial to Mr McPhee’s conviction, and that evidence had been “untrue”.
Speaking outside the court, Mr McPhee said that it would be hard to forgive those who had put him behind bars. He said: “I feel great now but a bit disappointed that we don’t know what happened or how it came about that I was in prison for 18 years. I would like a public inquiry to find out exactly what happened. I hope they get the person that committed the murder because he’s still out there, or she’s still out there somewhere.”
Mr McPhee’s case was referred back to the appeal court after an investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. Its findings cast serious doubts on the evidence of witnesses, including the police, and Mr McPhee was freed on bail in July 2003 pending a ruling.
He had been brought up in Culbokie but had moved to South Humberside by the time of the murder, and only returned during 1984 and 1985 for several housebreaking raids. At Mr McPhee’s trial at the High Court in Inverness, Colin Hawkins, his housebreaking partner, testified that Mr McPhee alone had broken into Mrs Sutherland’s house. Another witness, Trevor Proudfoot, who shared a cell with Mr McPhee, claimed that he had confessed to the killing.
Yesterday the judges concluded that both were “unsavoury individuals” with serious problems of credibility, and that it was Mr Lister’s evidence that had proved crucial to Mr McPhee’s conviction. Mr Lister, who has since died, had claimed that forensic experts believed footprints found in Mrs Sutherland’s garden and in her house were made by the same person, and matched a shoe worn by Mr McPhee when he was arrested. However, laboratory documents not seen during the trial proved that this was not the case. The judges said: “The Advocate Depute submitted to us that the overall impression was that Detective Superintendent Lister was not acting in bad faith. We find that difficult to accept.”
Yesterday Northern Constabulary said that it did not intend to reopen the case, and was not looking for anyone else in connection with the murder.
