A Fife man who stabbed his former girlfriend has lost an appeal against his conviction.
Martin McCreadie (36), of Dunfermline, is serving a three-year jail term after a jury found him guilty of attacking Hayley McKelvie with a kitchen knife at his home in William Street.
Miss McKelvie was left with a stab wound on her right leg and cuts on her hands and face.
During the trial at Dunfermline Sheriff Court, defence solicitor advocate John Keenan made a no case to answer submission.
Mr Keenan argued that a DNA analysis of blood found on the weapon fell short of corroborating circumstantial evidence.
However appeal court judge Lord Emslie backed Sheriff Paul Arthurson’s decision to reject the no case to answer submission.
In his opinion, forensic evidence was “more than adequate for corroborative purposes,” and analysis of the blood on the knife had shown it contained “significant levels” of McCreadie’s DNA.
The judge said, “In the view of the Crown, and of the sheriff in repelling the submission of no case to answer, there was ample evidence capable of supporting or corroborating the complainer’s clear positive eyewitness identification of the appellant as her attacker.
“The incident occurred in the appellant’s own home. When the police arrived at the scene, he was not there. He was not seen again until four days later, at which point he was arrested in the street.
“In addition, the extent to which the mixed DNA profile from the knife handle actually matched the appellant was important evidence in its own right.
“Before us, however, Mr Keenan for the appellant insisted that forensic evidence lacking any statistical evaluation of the primary findings fell short of the minimum standard which the law required for corroborative purposes.
“We have reached the conclusion, ultimately without great difficulty, that this appeal is not well founded and that there was, in law, a sufficiency of evidence tending to identify the appellant as the complainer’s attacker.”
McCreadie was jailed in August. After two hours of deliberation the jury found him guilty of assaulting and injuring Miss McKelvie 12 months earlier. The couple were in an on-off relationship for two years, but had split up.
Sheriff Arthurson told McCreadie that he had been convicted of “an extremely serious offence.”
Image used under Creative Commons licence courtesy of Flickr user steakpinball.