Dead dealer's conviction quashed

A man found guilty of the manslaughter of a Dorset woman who died after injecting heroin has had his conviction quashed posthumously after an appeal.

Paul Finlay was convicted in 2002 for causing the death of mother-of-six Jasmine Grosvenor, 41, from Weymouth.

He was found guilty on the basis he had prepared the drug, loaded a syringe and handed it to her before she injected.

But appeal judges ruled the conviction of Mr Finlay, who died in 2008, had been "unsafe".

Mr Finlay, who died from a drugs overdose in 2008, was convicted of Ms Grosvenor's manslaughter by a jury at Winchester Crown Court in February 2002, when he was 27.

'Identical' case

He had denied manslaughter and lost an appeal in 2003, but he applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission which referred the case to the Court of Appeal.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, said that in October 2007 the House of Lords quashed a conviction in a case where the circumstances were "virtually identical" to those in the case of Mr Finlay.

The Law Lords unanimously found that a drug supplier to a fully-informed and responsible adult could never be guilty of unlawful act manslaughter where the user had freely and voluntarily self-administered the drug.

The inevitable consequence was that "the conviction should be treated as unsafe".

Lord Judge said that Mr Finlay, who had a lengthy criminal record, had however, been acting criminally when supplying the drug to the deceased.

In the original trial, Mr Finlay was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment after being convicted of Ms Grosvenor's manslaughter.

The term was to run consecutively to a term of four and a half years imposed in October 2001 in a separate case.

Ms Grosvenor died in April 2001 at her home in Weymouth, Dorset.