A killer convicted of sexually abusing two 15-year-old girls may bid to have one of his convictions thrown out after a legal blunder emerged just minutes before he was due to be sentenced.
Colin McArthur, 44, was jailed for 10 years in 1998 after being convicted of the culpable homicide of Amanda Duncan, 21, at a flat in Dundee.
McArthur, then known as Colin Crabb, started a fire at his flat on Cardean Street using white spirit, which spread to the flat upstairs where tragic Amanda lived.
McArthur now faces another prison sentence after a jury found him guilty of two separate sex attacks on 15-year-old girls carried out almost five years apart.
He appeared at Dundee Sheriff Court on Wednesday to face sentence for the attacks but moments before he appeared in the dock his lawyers discovered a “mistake” in their own handling of the case, which could lead to a challenge to his conviction on one of the attacks.
An earlier trial had heard how McArthur abused the first girl at a flat in Dundee’s Butterburn Square on January 1 2006.
McArthur fondled the 15-year-old under her clothing while she was “under the influence of alcohol”.
Mike Short, defending, told the court that McArthur, then still known as Colin Crabb, had been arrested and charged over that offence in 2006, appearing from custody and being remanded for a week.
He was then released and told that no further action would be taken at that time. Crucially, details of that earlier appearance only emerged on Wednesday.
Mr Short said he made the discovery as he prepared to present a plea in mitigation for McArthur and that criminal procedure rules mean the killer should not have faced prosecution seven years after the initial court appearance.
“This was a mistake on our part. It was filed under his alias and only emerged when I searched the records using his date of birth,” Mr Short told the court.
A jury convicted McArthur of the first assault on the 15-year-old at trial. They also found him guilty of carrying out an almost identical offence on July 30 2010, at his present home on Ormiston Crescent.
Sheriff Kenneth McGowan deferred sentence for two weeks for Mr Short to carry out “investigations” into the bluder and McArthur was released on bail in the meantime.