Murder of Amanda Duffy

Amanda Duffy, a 19-year-old Scottish student, was killed in grisly circumstances in 1992. The main suspect, Francis Auld, was tried for murder in the High Court of Justiciary in Glasgow and was acquitted when the jury returned a majority verdict of "not proven". A bid by prosecutors to try Auld for a second time on the basis of new evidence was rejected by the courts in 2016. Auld died of pancreatic cancer in July 2017, aged 45.

The outcome of Auld's trial prompted a national conversation around the continued existence of the "not proven" verdict and around double jeopardy rules.

Murder
Duffy, a 19-year-old student at Motherwell College, went missing in the early hours of Saturday 30 May 1992 after a night out with friends, celebrating the fact she had been called to audition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Her body was found by passers-by that evening in an area of waste ground near a car park at Miller Street, Hamilton, South Lanarkshire.

Duffy was found "lying on her back, naked from the waist down, with her face and head covered in blood" and branches and twigs "had been inserted into her mouth, nostrils and vagina". According to a post mortem examination, she had died between 1.30 am and 1.30 pm, having suffered extensive blunt force injuries to the head and neck, as well as asphyxia and injuries to the anus and rectum.

Trial
20-year-old Francis Auld was tried for Duffy's murder in 1992. Witnesses had seen Auld with Duffy between midnight and 1 am. A bite to Duffy's right breast, which would have been "excruciatingly painful" and was inflicted within an hour prior to death, matched Auld's dental features. However, Auld said that he had left Duffy in the company of someone named "Mark", who was never identified. The jury returned a majority verdict of "not proven" in November 1992.

Threatening phone calls
In 1994, Auld was convicted of making threatening phone calls to two former friends, and sentenced to 240 hours community service. He admitted telling one of them "Patrick, you thought Amanda was the last. Well, you're next, after Caroline."

Civil action
In 1995, Duffy's parents, Joe and Kathleen, sued Auld in civil court, where the standard of evidence is lower. Auld did not contest the lawsuit and the couple were awarded a £50,000 payout. This amount was never paid.

Calls to scrap "not proven" verdict
Following the verdict in the criminal trial, Duffy's parents launched a high-profile campaign for the "not proven" verdict to be abolished in Scots law. A national petition was launched at an event in Glasgow addressed by Joe Duffy. In 1993, the couple's Member of Parliament, George Robertson, launched the Criminal Procedure (Abolition Of Not Proven Verdict) (Scotland) Bill in the House of Commons to scrap the verdict, though its likelihood of success was considered slim.

The Duffys' campaign also increased pressure on the Scottish Office, which eventually launched a consultation on scrapping the "not proven" verdict in 1994. MP John Home Robertson, in a 1995 bid to scrap the verdict, praised "Kathleen and Joe Duffy for the thoughtful and constructive campaign that they have been waging". When the Scottish Parliament debated scrapping the verdict in 2016, the Duffy case was cited by MSP Michael McMahon in support of scrapping the verdict.

Bid for retrial
After the introduction of the Double Jeopardy (Scotland) Act 2011, which allows for a person to be tried twice for the same crime in certain circumstances, Strathclyde Police reopened an investigation into Duffy's murder in 2012 because they believed that "certain people have information in relation to Amanda's murder that they are withholding, perhaps from a sense of misguided loyalty". Police Scotland's cold case unit later re-examined the crime on the instruction of the Crown Office.

In 2015, prosecutors launched a bid under the Act to re-try Auld for the murder. However, the bid was rejected by judges in February 2016. Jim Govan, the chief forensic scientist at the original trial, then went on public record, saying the jury got the verdict wrong and there was more than enough evidence to convict. Auld died of cancer in July 2017.