Convicted murderer Luke Mitchell has failed to win a legal battle at Scotland’s highest civil court over a parole board decision to deny him his freedom.

The 36-year-old killer instructed lawyers to go to the Court of Session in bid to show that the board acted unlawfully in how it decided to keep him in jail last April.

His advocate Shaun McPhee argued earlier this month that the hearing was procedurally unfair and failed to consider all of the evidence which was before it.

Here, in a column first published last year, leading criminologist David Wilson, argues that Luke Mitchell may be innocent

I’ve never needed to be convinced that miscarriages of justice happen in Scotland.

I even wrote a book - Signs of Murder - about one such miscarriage that occurred after the murder of a young woman called Margaret McLaughlin in Carluke in July 1973. In that case the police “fitted up” a local man called George Beattie, who was a bit “soft”, enjoyed train spotting as a hobby and had a below average IQ. During his fourth police interview George would go on to give what I described as a “pseudo-confession”, in which he claimed that Margaret had been stabbed by men wearing tall hats with mirrors on them, and that he had been forced to watch.

It was all nonsense.

In Signs of Murder I even recount tracking down the person I believe to have been more likely to have been Margaret’s killer and report a tense exchange that I had with him on his doorstep. He wasn’t pleased.

The publication of the book led to questions being asked in the Scottish parliament and raising hopes that George, at long last, might get exonerated for a crime that he most certainly did not commit.

However, slowly and silently, the Scottish judicial system clearly........

© Herald Scotland