Oscar Slater's Appeal
Oscar Slater's Appeal is an article published in The Times on 14 june 1928.
Oscar Slater's Appeal
REPORTED WITHDRAWAL FROM PROCEEDINGS.
The Glasgow Evening News stated last night that Oscar Slater has withdrawn his appeal against his conviction for the murder of Miss Marion Christie at Glasgow in 1908, and has given instructions to his solicitors to abandon the proceedings.
Slater's appeal, to facilitate which special legislation was necessary, was opened last week in the High Court of Judiciary, Edinburgh, sitting as a Court of Criminal Appeal. The Court decided to allow certain new evidence at the subsequent hearings, but decided against an application to put Slater into the witness-box. The LORD JUSTICE-GENERAL said that Slater had nothing, new to say to what appeared at the trial, and his evidence would amount to nothing more than a repetition of his plea of "Not Guilty." In these circumstances it would be unreasonable to spend time over a new examination.
Slater was convicted in 1909, and the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released from Peterbead Prison last November.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in a statement, to the Press Association at Cadnam, near Southampton, last night, said that Oscar Slater came to London to see him on Monday, and said that he proposed to withdraw the appeal. "I know that Slater is terribly disappointed in not being allowed to go into the box,"
Sir Arthur said. "I think his brain is about turned by all that he has gone through. When he found that he could not give evidence he imagined that there was a foolish conspiracy against him, and he declared that he was going to do this foolish action. I told him that he could not do this himself, because it is a Government inquiry, and I said that it must go on."
