A serial fire-starter has had his legal bid for freedom quashed by appeal court judges.
Matthew Martin was locked up for four years after a jury found him guilty of a spate of blazes across Perthshire.
Martin destroyed four caravans, including two of his own, and put residents at risk when he set fire to an armchair in the stairwell of a block of flats in Crieff.
Last year, jurors heard that he was caught when a police sniffer dog tracked a scent from the burnt-out remains of a mobile home to the door of his caravan.
Lawyers for Martin argued that there was not enough evidence to convict him and he should never have been locked up.
They said there was no direct eyewitness to any of the offences being committed and no forensic evidence linking the crimes to their client.
It was also claimed that Martin’s prison sentence was “excessive” given that he had never served time in jail before and had a history of mental health problems.
However, the solictors’ bid to overturn both conviction and sentence was dismissed by judges at the Court of Criminal Appeals in Edinburgh.
In his findings, Lord Bracadale said the sheriff had been right to repel a no-case-to-answer submission during the trial.
“The appellent (Martin) was convicted of a course of conduct involving setting fire to caravans and the premises at 1 Corton Place, Crieff. This charge was particularly serious, given that the lives of other persons in the building, including a family, were endangered,” he said.
“In these circumstances it cannot be said that the length of sentence was excessive.”
Perth Sheriff Court heard that in 2013 Martin owned two caravans which sat in a layby on the A85 Perth-Oban road near St Fillans.
One caught fire on the morning of August 14 that year. Martin was the only person in the area at the time.
The second caravan caught fire two months later.
Martin was re-homed to a flat in Corton Place. Just after 2am on October 23 – the day after the last caravan fire – an armchair was set alight in a communal hallway, while a family slept upstairs.
A tin of lighter fluid was found on a table in Martin’s flat.
In July 2014, Martin struck again when he set fire to another caravan on the same A85 stretch. The mobile home had been broken into earlier and stolen items were found at Martin’s property.
