TAXPAYERS have been left with a £1.7million bill to help some of the north and north-east’s most notorious murderers fight their cases in court.
Wife-killers Malcolm Webster, Nat Fraser and James Munro, racist assassin Michael Ross and baby-killers Mark Simpson and Mohammed Ullah have all run up huge legal aid bills, the Press and Journal can reveal.
The payouts were branded “vile” by the family of one victim last night.
But the legal aid system was also defended yesterday, with one politician describing it as a “pillar of justice”.
Elgin businessman Fraser – who has twice been convicted of hiring a hitman to murder his wife Arlene in 1998 – has run up the biggest bill thanks to his string of appeals.
Fraser was first convicted of murdering his wife in 2003 and jailed for a minimum of 25 years. The 54-year-old lost one appeal against his conviction before taking his fight to the Supreme Court in London.
Judges there ruled he had suffered a miscarriage of justice, and the conviction was quashed. That prompted a second trial last year, where again he was found guilty of murdering the mother-of-two, whose body has never been found.
Fraser appealed again earlier this year but lost. The total cost of legal aid awarded to him to date is £822,882.06.
Webster’s bill for his four-month trial – the longest in Scottish history for a single accused – was £386,668.33. Earlier this month, appeal judges rejected his claims he had suffered a miscarriage of justice.
The former north-east nurse was jailed for 30 years for murdering his first wife, Claire Morris, in a deliberate car crash in Aberdeenshire and trying to do the same to his second wife five years later.
Peter Morris, the brother of Claire Morris, said the money spent on her killer was “vile”. “What I would like to see is better balance in the shape of the amount of money spent on victims compared to the amount spent on the criminals,” he said.
“Everyone is entitled to receive help to ensure there are no miscarriages of justice. I completely accept that. However, victims are in great need of support throughout the course of any criminal process, both before, during and after trial.”
Former soldier Michael Ross, who shot dead Bangladeshi waiter Shamsuddin Mahmood in a Kirkwall restaurant, has cost the taxpayer a total of £177,965.87 for his trial and appeal.
The 34-year-old sniper was jailed in 2008, to the disbelief of his army of supporters, who have always believed the then 15-year-old – who was brought to justice 12 years after the crime when after a new witness came forward – was wrongly convicted.
Elgin man James Munro, who was jailed earlier this year for killing his fiancee, Kim Campbell, has also added to the bill, with his trial and subsequent ongoing appeal costing £61,398.50.
Despite the anger at the costs, Scottish Conservative chief whip John Lamont said it was important that people had access to legal representation.
“The public will be disgusted that convicts capable of such vicious crimes can leave taxpayers with a seven-figure tab to pick up,” he said.
“Of course, everyone has the right to appeal – that’s one of the pillars of our justice system.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: “Legal aid applications are subject to statutory tests that are applied on an individual basis.
“The Scottish Legal Aid Board applies these tests and the Scottish Government is prohibited from seeking to influence or interfere with any application made to the Scottish Legal Aid Board.”
Comment, Page 24