Judges overturn murder conviction

The original trial found Craig guilty of murder

An Ayrshire man who killed a pensioner at his farmhouse 10 years ago is to be freed after judges overturned his conviction for murder.

Gordon Craig, 29, has had his life sentence reduced to four years after a lengthy legal challenge which succeeded in securing a conviction for the lesser charge of culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Retired farmer John Smith died of shock and haemorrhage after he was attacked by Craig at his home near Darvel.

We were satisfied that the psychiatric evidence has established on a balance of probabilities, that he was suffering from diminished responsibility at the time of the offence

Lord Kirkwood, appeal judge

At the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh, appeal judges said they would write a report for the parole board over the unusual circumstances of the case.

Craig was a teenager in 1991 when he was ordered to be detained for life after a jury took 90 minutes to find him guilty of the murder of 81-year-old Mr Smith.

He was found dead in a pool of blood at his remote farmhouse at Knevochlaw Farm.

Injuries included a fractured nose, a shattered jaw, several broken ribs and a fractured breastbone.

Mr Smith had also been repeatedly punched and kicked.

Short of money

Trial judge, Lord Sutherland, said it had been a "brutal and sustained attack" on an elderly man who could not put up any resistance.

Craig, of Borebrae, Newmilns, in Ayrshire, was not caught for six weeks after the killing.

He had spent the evening of the killing drinking and as he appeared to be short of money told a friend he was going to steal.

Craig was moved to Carstairs

Craig went to the farmhouse planning to break in but was confronted by his elderly victim.

He denied committing the murder and claimed that he had an alibi.

Prior to his trial at the High Court in Glasgow he was seen by two psychiatrists who both said he was sane and fit to plead and did not show any evidence of a mental disorder.

But after a year in the prison system Craig was judged to be "psychiatrically ill" and was transferred to the high-security State Hospital at Carstairs.

Lengthy appeals process

Doctors at the institution began to express concern that Craig had been suffering from a mental illness when the offence was committed and contacted his lawyers.

A lengthy appeal process then began which resulted in six psychiatrists giving evidence to the court.

Five of them decided that at the time of the killing he was mentally ill.

Lord Kirkwood, who heard the appeal with Lord MacLean and Lady Cosgrove, said: "We were satisfied that the psychiatric evidence, which is now available, has established on a balance of probabilities, that he was suffering from diminished responsibility at the time of the offence.

"If that evidence had been before the jury at the trial, then the jury, properly instructed, would have found guilty not of murder, but of culpable homicide."