TWO Belfast teenagers convicted of murdering an 83 year old woman were granted a retrial yesterday after the Appeal Court ruled that the trial judge misdirected the jury.
Adrian Wilson (19), from Cavehill Road, and Colin King, (18) of Newington Avenue, had been sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering Mrs Bessie Robson in her home at Bellevue Park, Belfast, where she lived alone.
She was battered and stabbed on December 29th 1994, and afterwards her body and the bedroom were set on fire.
In a reserved judgment yesterday, the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Brian Hutton, said it was not in dispute that Wilson and King broke into the house to carry out a burglary and in the course of it Mrs Robson was killed in a savage attack.
At the trial the two had tried to place the sole blame for the killing on the other. They gave conflicting evidence as to which of them attacked Mrs Robson and to where each was when the attack was carried out.
Sir Brian said appeal laywers had submitted that the trial judge misdirected the jury because he withdrew the option of finding one of the two guilty of manslaughter because he was not present at the killing.
"We recognise the complexity and difficulty of this point of, law and the meticulous cared which the judge took in placing the various possibilities before the jury," he said. "But we consider that in this particular part of his charge he erred in the direction he gave, although on one view his direction was generous.
Accordingly, the convictions, for murder were quashed and a retrial ordered.
Sir Brian, who heard the appeals with Lord Justices Carswell and Nicholson, told Wilson and King they would have to remain in custody pending the new trial.