A MAN cleared of the World's End murders of 1977 is to stand trial again under double jeopardy laws.
Last month the Crown Office was granted permission to bring the new prosecution against Angus Sinclair and he was yesterday indicted for the murders of Helen Scott and Christine Eadie. The girls were both 17 when they were found dead after a night out at the World's End pub on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh on October 15, 1977.
Ms Eadie's naked body was discovered in Gosford Bay, East Lothian. Ms Scott's body, also naked, was found six miles away in a field. Sinclair stood trial for the murders in 2007 but the trial collapsed when the judge threw out the case and cleared him.
His retrial will be the first held in Scotland since new double jeopardy laws were passed last November allowing people to face a criminal trial for a second time.
When the legislation changed, the Crown Office ordered police to reinvestigate the murders - one of the most notorious unsolved cases in Scottish history.
Yesterday the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Carloway, sitting with Lady Dorrian and Lord Bracadale, gave permission for a re-trial following the application under the Double Jeopardy (Scotland) Act 2011. A preliminary hearing is set for June 26.
Three weeks ago it was announced that three men acquitted of murdering 32-year-old waiter Surjit Singh Chhokar outside his home in Overtown, Lanarkshire, in 1998 are set to face a retrial. The case was dubbed "Scotland's Stephen Lawrence" amid claims of "institutional police racism".
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