A death row rottweiler’s fate could be taken to the Scottish legal body that reviewed the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) could be asked to assess whether a miscarriage of justice may have occurred after an attempt to gain a pardon for Kai failed.
The dog was sentenced to death in November by Sheriff Gregor Murray at Forfar after it attacked a Canadian tourist in Montrose in June.
The animal’s owner Wendy Ross, 34, from Montrose, instructed lawyers to seek a reprieve.
But judges sitting at Edinburgh’s Sheriff Appeal Court on Tuesday ruled the sheriff acted correctly and the animal has to be destroyed.
“I’m absolutely devastated,” said Ms Ross following the decision. “He’s just a big softie and this wouldn’t have happened if I’d been with him.
“I’m prepared to go as far as I can to save his life even if it means I have to give up ownership.”
The dog remains on death row in Courier Country kennels following yesterday’s hearing in Edinburgh,
But it has since emerged that the case could now go to the SCCRC.
The SCCRC previously reviewed the conviction of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s appeal against his 27-year minimum jail sentence.
During the trial, James Ryan, 62, also of Montrose, was found guilty of being in charge of Kai when he bit Canadian visitor Charles Andrews on the leg and arms on Lower Hall Street on June 11.
The court heard the two-year-old attacked Mr Andrews as it was “protective” of a child it was walking beside.
Solicitor advocate Jim Stephenson told appeal judges yesterday that experts reckoned Kai could be neutered and given a muzzle.
Sheriff principal Mhairi Stephen QC who chaired the three judge appeal said: “On the day of the offence, Kai presented as a danger to the public.
“Even if the dog was to be neutered and muzzled, it still shows that the dog constitutes a danger. We fail to see how the sheriff erred in law.”