Miscarriage of justice overturned after 50 years

A woman jailed over the IRA attack on the British Army in Derry 50 years ago is to have her convictions quashed following a judgement of the Court of Appeal.

Senior judges had questioned the reliability of the vulnerable teenager’s supposed admissions to charges linked to the attack, in which a British soldier was killed.

New evidence showed that as part of a tortuous interrogation, the RUC police (now PSNI) had shown Pauline McLaughlin, then 17, photographs of corpses in a form of psychological pressure.

“The safeguards needed to protect against unfairness were not applied in this case to a young woman who was illiterate and operating at the level of a young child,” the judge said.

Issues were raised about McLaughlin’s intellectual capacity at the time of her arrest.

One British soldier was killed and another wounded in the IRA sniper attack in October 1974. Now aged 67, Ms McLaughlin was also prosecuted over separate attacks at a factory and a warehouse in the city in October 1974 and September 1975.

The case against her was based on her admissions and she was convicted of eight offences – after three men had already been jailed for carrying out the sniper attack.

McLaughlin was released in 1981 on medical grounds.

Her appeal against the convictions was based on fresh evidence which became available during a re-examination by a body set up to look into potential miscarriages of justice.

Defence lawyers argued that her legal representatives at the original trial did not act in accordance with instructions, failed to deploy available evidence of her illiteracy and the police ill-treatment.

It was shown that she had been convicted without properly scrutinising the reliability of statements of admission.

The court heard a clinical psychologist concluded before her trial that she was in a “high grade mentally subnormal category”.

Ruling on the appeal, the court identified “stark and exceptional circumstances” related to the defendant’s mental age and intellectual capacity at the time.

“This was a vulnerable young woman, with an IQ of 64 in the learning disability bracket,” said Chief Justice Siobhan Keegan.

“The prosecution was clearly alive to the issue. Yet there we no safeguards provided to protect her including access to a lawyer and an appropriate adult.”

She concluded: “Accordingly, we cannot be satisfied as to the safety of these convictions… and we will quash (them).”

Urgent Appeal