A man who murdered his wife in a staged car crash and tried to kill his second in a copycat crash has lost an appeal against his conviction.
Malcolm Webster, 54, was jailed for a minimum of 30 years for killing Claire Morris, 32, in the planned smash in Aberdeenshire in 1994 and attempting to kill Felicity Drumm in New Zealand in 1999 to claim insurance money.
The former nurse, from Guildford, Surrey, was handed the life sentence after being convicted of the crimes in May 2011.
Judges at the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh today rejected a claim that he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
Webster's legal team argued that scientific experts, who gave evidence at the trial, had not been able to rule out the possibility that the fatal car fire started accidentally.
As a result there was insufficient evidence for the jury to conclude that Ms Morris had been murdered, they said.
But Lord Eassie, delivering the opinion of the three appeal judges, said: "There was nothing in their testimony offering any real, positive support for a contention that, given the interval before it erupted, this fire was accidental."
He said that the prosecution case that the fire was deliberate did not rely solely on expert evidence.
Lawyers for Webster attacked the decision of trial judge Lord Bannatyne to allow the Crown to call a late witness, farm worker Ian Hardie, who contacted prosecutors after the trial had begun.
Mr Hardie gave evidence that he had seen Webster at the site of the fatal crash 11 days before it occurred. Prosecutors argued that this was him familiarising himself with the spot before staging the crash.
Webster's lawyers said extensive media coverage of the trial had created prejudice which called Mr Hardie's identification into question.
But Lord Eassie said: "Mr Hardie's emergence as a potentially material witness came to all engaged in the trial as something wholly unexpected.
"The assessment of prejudice was a matter of assessment for the trial judge when he came to consider whether he should exercise his discretion to allow the additional evidence to be led. We have come to the view that his assessment is not open to successful challenge."
Webster's legal team also argued that the significant differences between the murder of Ms Morris and the attempted murder of Ms Drumm meant the two Appeal judgessaid this was "not well-founded".
A hearing on Webster's appeal against sentence will be held at a later date.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article