A murder trial jury was yesterday urged to find murder accused Steven Dickie not guilty.
He is accused, along with Tasmin Glass and Callum Davidson, of murdering oil worker Steven Donaldson in Kirriemuir last June.
Dickie’s QC, Ian Duguid, addressed the jury for more than 90 minutes at the High Court in Edinburgh on day 20 of the trial.
He said: “This is May 1 and we started hearing evidence on April 1. We have heard 52 witnesses, 46 for the prosecution, and we have heard from each of the three accused. We have also heard from a cardiologist and an astronomer.
“That’s a great deal of evidence for you to consider and digest.
“This is a terrible, horrible crime and there is no looking away from that fact.
“It is safe to say that all of you are thinking exactly the same as myself that this is a terrible, despicable crime.
“But you don’t judge a case on what you feel.
“All of us have sympathies for the family of Steven Donaldson.”
Glancing to the three accused in the dock – Dickie, Glass and Davidson – Mr Duguid added: “You have to decide which of them is guilty and not guilty.
“Perhaps it is one, perhaps only two and perhaps all three, but someone in the dock here has committed the murder, there’s no doubt about that.
“You are looking for credible and reliable evidence. There is a difference – credible is true and reliable is accurate.
“It is your interpretation of the evidence that matters.”
All three accused, from Kirriemuir, continue to deny murdering 27-year-old oil worker Mr Donaldson on June 6 or 7 last year after attacking him at Kirriemuir’s Peter Pan playpark, and then further attacking him with a baseball bat and knife and a heavy bladed instrument at Loch of Kinnordy, near Kirriemuir, and setting fire to him and his car.
Mr Duguid stressed that there was no DNA or forensic evidence linking Dickie to the baseball bat and said: “Mr Dickie is not connected to the baseball bat at all, there is no fingerprint on it.
“The baseball bat definitely has the dead man’s blood on it and it definitely has the fingerprint of Callum Davidson on its handle.
“There is no CCTV evidence which identifies Mr Dickie. There are no searches on the internet for heavy bladed weapons.”
Mr Duguid branded Davidson “a gratuitously violent man” and also “a complete liar” before appealing for his client to be acquitted.
He said: “The DNA and the scientists’ evidence and the internet searches all point to Callum Davidson. Nothing of that points to Steven Dickie.
“I invite you to be discerning and find that Mr Dickie should be acquitted of this murder.”
In a closing speech by Crown prosecutor Ashley Edwards QC, she claimed the trio accused of murdering Mr Donaldson of hatching a “murderous plan” on the evening before his body was found charred and beaten at an Angus nature reserve.
She said all three played their part with “wicked disregard for the consequences” on the night of June 6 last year.
The trial, before Lord Pentland, continues.
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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