Trial & Error TV - Evidence-Based Justice Lab online -
A criminal trial is not a trial of the truth. It’s a competition to prove or disprove guilt … A man who panicked, gambled and lost. He is a fool and a thief. But he doesn’t deserve the life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit. Trial & Error: Cut Throat Defence of George McPhee, Channel 4 1995
Culbokie: Totsie Sutherland was found strangled. She had also been viciously stabbed. ibid.
Colin Hawkins’ account doesn’t square too well. ibid.
George McPhee was convicted of the murder of Elizabeth Sutherland during a house break in. McPhee had been brought up in Culbokie. He had later moved away but had returned on several housebreaking raids. He was arrested almost a year after Mrs Sutherland’s death but blamed an associate for the murder. The evidence against him consisted of evidence from that associate, evidence of a prisoner he had shared a cell with who said McPhee had confessed, and evidence of footprints found outside and inside Ms Sutherland’s house that were said to be linked to McPhee. On appeal, it was heard that the footprint evidence had been discredited by scientists and the key witnesses had serious problems of credibility (this included the associate and the prison cell-mate). The Court relied primarily on the discrediting of the footprint evidence in allowing the appeal and quashing the conviction. Evidence-Based Justice Lab online article