A man accused of trying to defraud insurance companies by setting fire to his partner’s £19,000 Audi has been found not guilty after trial at Dundee Sheriff Court.
The sheriff found there was not enough evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Paul Morrison Martin (53), of Arklay Terrace, was guilty of driving Theresa Noble’s vehicle to Caird Park and trying to set it alight on January 18 last year.
He was also found not guilty of pretending to insurers and police that the car and its contents, including a watch, a satnav system and CDs, had been stolen and destroyed.
Mr Martin had been accused of forming a scheme to claim insurance money by fraud and wasting police time by making false statements to three officers.
However, on Thursday his agent David Duncan told the court there was not enough evidence to convict Mr Martin.
Instead he said all of the facts pointed to Ms Noble, Mr Martin’s ex-partner and former co-accused, whose pleas of not guilty were earlier accepted when the case first came to trial in April.
Mr Duncan said up until that point the prosecution had pursued the case on the basis that Mr Martin and Ms Noble were effectively involved in what he called ”a criminal conspiracy.”
Ms Noble had been serving as a senior support officer with Tayside Police until she resigned, following the allegations against her.
Mr Duncan said the Crown had readily accepted Ms Noble’s pleas and then 20 minutes later accepted a confession she provided from Mr Martin.
He said: ”Twenty minutes later Theresa Noble provided the court with a confession from Paul Martin which had never seen the light of day before.
”The Crown appears to have absolved Theresa Noble from all responsibility. That is directly at odds with the opinion of the reporting officer and DC Sharon Mitchell and the evidence in this case.”
He said Ms Noble had failed to tell the court exactly when she gleaned the confession from Mr Martin, and said it was ”fairly non-specific.”
Earlier in the trial the court heard how in a police interview, Mr Martin was told by Detective Sergeant Marcus Lorente that a man had been seen running towards his house at 1.37am that morning, 50 minutes after what looked like a silver Audi had been driven off.
When asked if he had stolen it Mr Martin replied ”No” and also denied arranging for someone else to steal it.
DS Lorente had told Martin the officers believed he was the man seen on CCTV running back to the house.
However, Mr Duncan told the court the CCTV footage held ”no value whatsoever.”
He said: ”The quality of the footage is fairly poor. There is a figure and there is a vehicle but that is about it.”
Depute fiscal Gillian Sim had told the court the CCTV footage, the lack of evidence of a break-in to the house and the fact that a petrol canister was missing from the household garage pointed to Mr Martin, even before the confession submitted by Ms Noble was included.
However, Mr Duncan said: ”The condition that it must have been Paul Martin because it couldn’t have been anyone else is fundamentally flawed.”