Double appeal blow to notorious killers Nat Fraser and Luke Mitchell

Published on Friday 29 January 2010 21:57

TWO of Scotland's most notorious murderers of modern times sat together yesterday as appeal judges told one he would not be allowed another chance to clear his name, and hinted that the same decision lay in store for the other.

Nat Fraser, 51, and Luke Mitchell, 21, had both tried to use the same procedure to reopen appeals they have already lost, so their cases were heard together and they took seats in the dock of the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh.

A bench of five judges, headed by Lord Hamilton, the Lord Justice-General, Scotland's senior judge, ruled that Fraser's petition be dismissed as incompetent.

Mitchell, with mother Corinne looking on, had asked for time to try to find lawyers, and Lord Hamilton said: "We have decided to grant Mitchell's request for an adjournment of his case so that he can obtain legal advice and, if appropriate, representation. No doubt that advice will take account of the views expressed in this opinion (the Fraser ruling]."

One of the benefits of the method adopted by Fraser and Mitchell would have been that their cases could have been reconsidered by the appeal court much more quickly than if they had taken the conventional route of an application to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Fraser is serving a minimum of 25 years for arranging the contract killing of his estranged wife, Arlene, at their home in New Elgin, Moray. Mrs Fraser disappeared in 1998. She and her husband had separated, and it was feared she had been killed so Fraser could avoid a costly divorce settlement. No body was ever found, and it was five years before Fraser stood trial.

He had a cast-iron alibi for the morning his wife vanished, but a friend testified Fraser had confided in him about hiring a killer to strangle Arlene. The friend added that Fraser had admitted burning the body and crushing and scattering the remains.

In 2006, Fraser was released pending an appeal. It was heard in 2007 and, after 19 months of freedom, his bail was withdrawn and he was returned to jail. Subsequently, the appeal court ruled Fraser had not suffered a miscarriage of justice, and his conviction stood.

In his new petition, Fraser complained that the court in 2007 had refused to allow late grounds of appeal and had denied him a fair hearing. The court had ruled the grounds were too late and that the matters he tried to raise had been adequately covered by the existing grounds of appeal.

Lord Hamilton said a decision of the appeal court was normally final.

He added: "The court has a wide discretion to allow or disallow an appellant to found any aspect of his appeal on a ground not contained in his note of appeal. The court was entitled, for the reasons it gave, to exercise its discretion in the way which it did. The finality provision has effect."

Mitchell and his girlfriend Jodi Jones were both 14 at the time of her death in June 2003. She had set out from her home in Easthouses, Dalkeith, Midlothian, to meet Mitchell, who lived at the end of Roan's Dyke path in the Newbattle area.

The alarm was raised when she failed to return home, and her naked body was found in woods behind a wall that ran along the path. Her throat had been slit, and her body mutilated. A jury found Mitchell guilty of the murder and he was given a life sentence and ordered to serve at least 20 years.

Last year, he lost an appeal, but the appeal court made a withering attack on police for "an overbearing and hostile interrogation" of Mitchell, then 15, as they tried to break him into a confession.