Hay Gordon, Iain

Iain Hay Gordon was convicted in March 1953 of murder.

On the law as it then stood, Mr Gordon was found “guilty but insane,” principally on the basis of a confession secured at the conclusion of police interrogation.

The CCRC received an application for review of the conviction in July 1999.

In addition to identifying inadequacies in the trial judge’s summing up and directions to the jury, the CCRC found that several witness statements and other pieces of evidence which were material to Mr Gordon’s case had not been disclosed by the prosecution.

The CCRC concluded that there was a real possibility the Court of Appeal would find that the jury may not have reached the same verdict had they heard this non-disclosed evidence.

Significantly, the CCRC considered that Mr Gordon’s confession statement had been obtained at the end of an interrogation in which a police officer had used Mr Gordon’s homosexuality, then illegal, to pressure him to confess.

The CCRC referred the conviction in July 2000.

The Court of Appeal quashed the conviction in December 2000.