Michael Murphy v. Her Majesty's Advocate [2007] HCJAC57

Criminal Note of Appeal Against Conviction & Sentence:- On 20 June 2003, at the High Court in Edinburgh, the appellant was found guilty of ten out of fourteen charges following trial. The appellant was a member of the de la Salle Order. Following training, the appellant took his vows in 1959, after which he went to work at St Ninian's School, Gartmore, an approved school, where he worked between 1961 an 1969. The appellant was a welfare officer. In relation to the ten charges of which he was convicted there were nine complainers.The appellant was subsequently sentenced to two years imprisonment in cumulo. A number of documents containing various grounds of appeal were lodged, however, many were not insisted upon. Remaining grounds included:- (1) "Further and in any event, the appellant did not receive a fair trial within the meaning of Article 6 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms as a result of the delays hereinbefore referred to. Reference is made to the Devolution Minutes presented to the Court at said preliminary diet."; (2) a challange to the manner in which identification evidence was led at trial, in particular, the manner in which the Crown during the trial failed to ask witnesses to make "dock identifications" yet still relied on other areas of identification evidence from those witnesses; (3) oppression in that the trial judge misdirected the jury in so far as he failed to give them adequate directions about prejudice to the appellant as a result of the absence or loss due to the passage of time of evidence which would have been available to the appellant for use in his defence to the charges libelled and (4) defective representation following a failure by his senior counsel at the trial not to renew de novo the plea of oppression advanced on behalf of the appellant at a pre-trial hearing. Here the court considered inter alia whether sufficient evidence had been led at trial to identify the appellant as the perpetrator of the crimes set out in the charges with which the appeal related. The court considered in relation to oppression whether the trial judge had failed to give adequate directions concerning such prejudice.