Duo's murder conviction is overturned

Published on 17/03/2006 14:08

TWO men who served ten years in jail after being found guilty of killing a friend during a drunken brawl had their murder convictions overturned today.

Steven Johnston, 42, and Billy Allison, 41, have always protested their innocence - pointing to numerous claimed sightings of Drew Forsyth, 34, after the fight which was supposed to have killed him.

They took their case to the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh when it was discovered that statements by witnesses who said they had seen Mr Forsyth alive and well in his home town of Dunfermline had not been handed to lawyers.

Appeal judges freed the two men in December after hearing the evidence which Allison and Johnston claimed police had kept from the jury at their original trial.

Lord Gill told them today that the convictions and life sentences which followed had been quashed and that their trial was unfair and the verdicts a miscarriage of justice. He added that the ruling was not a judgment on the guilt or innocence of Johnston and Allison.

Mr Forsyth was supposed to have died during a row with Johnston and Allison on November 3 1995, although his body lay in his flat in Milton Green for another six days before it was found.