Tasmin Glass was no “Machiavellian character from the underworld of crime” but a person from a good home who was not responsible in “any way, shape or form” for what happened to Steven Donaldson, the Kirriemuir murder trial has been told.
In his closing submission on the 20-year-old’s behalf, senior counsel Mark Stewart also asked the jury to reject the notion she was a “gold-digger”.
And he told them the death of the Arbroath oil worker had been driven by “the oldest motive in the world – jealousy of a woman”.
Mr Stewart said: “This is a 19-year-old girl with no record of violence or any criminality.
“On what hypothesis do we assume that someone like that suddenly becomes involved in an attack like that on her former boyfriend?”
He told the jury they had heard how co-accused Steven Dickie – who was in a sexual relationship with Glass – and Callum Davidson had previously committed acts of violence.
He said: “The people they visit violence on are the current boyfriends of their ex-girlfriends, or the ex-boyfriends of their current girlfriends.”
He described the killing as “an act of bullying that got grossly out of hand”.
The trial has heard evidence that Mr Donaldson – the father of Glass’s child – was to be given a “roughing up” in a row over money she was repaying him from a car insurance settlement.
Mr Stewart asked: “How does Mr Donaldson being assaulted in any way help with her money troubles, her pregnancy or their relationship issues?
“The Crown says she was a gold-digger. How does being associated with two men who suddenly attacked him assist her with her gold-digging?”
Glass’s two co-accused have both said she fled the Peter Pan playpark as Mr Donaldson came under attack on June 6.
Mr Stewart said: “If Tasmin Glass had indeed been soliciting a violent attack to be carried out by Davidson, or Dickie, or both of them, the question you have to ask is – why she is there?”
In the closing moments of his address, Mr Stewart told the jury that if they believed she was involved, the only offence it would be appropriate for them to consider would be culpable homicide.
Judge Lord Pentland was delivering his charge to the jury today.
The charges
The jury will consider only the charge of murder.
At the conclusion of Crown and defence evidence at the Edinburgh High Court trial against Steven Dickie, Callum Davidson and Tasmin Glass, Crown prosecutor Ashley Edwards indicated she was dropping five charges on the indictment against the two male accused. An allegation against Dickie and Davidson that they abused a kitten at Lochore in Fife was dropped.
Dickie and Davidson, both 24, had also faced two charges of threatening men by following them and presenting weapons on dates between 2014 and last year, and staring at a woman and kicking her car in Kirriemuir between August 2017 and April last year. Davidson had been accused of assaulting a man at the house in Glengate, and Dickie of assaulting a woman in the Ogilvy Arms pub between February 1 and 28 last year.
Trial judge Lord Pentland formally acquitted Dickie and Davidson of the five charges.
He told the jury that although the charges against the two men had been withdrawn, the panel of eight women and seven men were entitled to take evidence before them into account in their deliberations on the remaining charge of murder.
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