Weymouth addict's name cleared - after his death (From Dorset Echo)

Weymouth addict's name cleared - after his death

10:00am Thursday 2nd July 2009 in

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A HEROIN addict convicted of manslaughter in 2002 has had his name cleared by the country’s top judge – just over a year after his own death from an overdose.

Paul Anthony Finlay, who was 34 when he died, was convicted of the manslaughter of Jasmine Grosvenor, 41, who was with Finlay at her flat in Portmore Gardens, Wey-mouth, when she took an overdose of heroin in 2001.

He was jailed for 30 months after a Winchester Crown Court jury found that Mr Finlay had prepared the drug, loaded the syringe and handed it to Ms Grosvenor, who herself injected the dose that turned out be fatal. Although Mr Finlay – who always protested his innocence – fought to overturn his conviction, his first challenge was dismissed by the Appeal Court in 2003.

It was only once Law Lords had quashed a conviction in a similar case that Mr Finlay renewed his fight to clear his name and his case was taken up by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the independent body that investigates suspected miscarriages of justice.

Mr Finlay never lived to see the appeal through to fruition, but his sister, Georgina Cooke, took up the baton and pursued the challenge after his death in May last year.

Representing Mr Finlay before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, and two other judges at the Criminal Appeal Court yesterday, barrister, David Gibson-Lee, argued that, in the light of the House of Lords ruling, Mr Finlay’s conviction had to be quashed.

And Lord Judge concluded: “It is plain that Mr Finlay’s conviction, and the dismissal of his appeal against his conviction (in 2003), were wrong. The conviction should be treated as unsafe.”

The judge said the court ‘might have taken a different view if the (appeal) process had been started after his death by one of his family, not least because he had been acting criminally when supplying the heroin.

“Any vindication of his reputation may well have been of relatively minor significance”.

However, the judge, sitting with Mr Justice Simon and Mr Justice Blair, said Mr Finlay himself had done ‘everything reasonable’ to see his manslaughter conviction quashed whilst he was still alive.