It was February 2003, when William (Willie) Gage first contacted the offices of Miscarriages of Justice Organisation (M.O.J.O.) Scotland. Willie had been recalled on license, and was residing in HMP Barlinnie, and had been charged with the brutal murder of 33-year-old man in Cambuslang on the 7th March 2002. We remembered the case, how a man had been gunned down by a hit man outside his house. The gunmen shooting six times before fleeing into the dark. Willie had been picked up two months later on the 3rd of May 2002. The evidence connecting him to the crime came from a car found in Easterhouse, four miles away, an hour after the shooting, which turned out to have a jacket inside it with Willie’s D.N.A. on it. I should mention it this point, Willie Gage was no angel, at the time of his arrest; he was out on license after serving three and a half years, of a seven-year stretch, for an armed robbery. We hear you all, we heard alarm bells, gunman, armed robbery, well you would. But we asked a few journos, who were only to happy sending over the newspaper articles of the armed robbery, see there not all bad. (We would just like to say that we don’t condone in any shape or form sticking a gun in some ones face), but when your looking for an assassin we expected something a bit more concrete than the man that sat in front of us. We began to question the hit man theory, when we read that William Gage had been the driver, it was his co accused who was the gunman. They attempted to rob a jewellers in Perth, with an imitation gun, no excuse, but hardly the cold-blooded killer, that was being portrayed. See the story began to take an unusual spin, when along with the robbery articles of Willie’s past case, was background on the victim Justin McAlroy. Who had a colourful past? It was after reading newspaper cuttings about the victim, his father and the First Minister Jack McConnell, that we knew that this case was going to be a bit different. We don’t want to go to deeply into Justin McAlroy’s past, we leave that to the press. We are only concerned with the very strong possibility of a miscarriage of justice, and it’s implications. But how could we ignore, when we read that only six days before his killing, Justin McAlroy was at a Labour party fundraising Red Rose dinner dance, at his father’s exclusive golf and country club, mingling with Jack McConnell, John Reid and Frank Roy. And that his father Thomas McAlroy had donated thousands of pounds to the Motherwell and Wishaw Labour party, as well as his construction company, Ailsa Builders, receiving millions of pound worth of North Lanarkshire council contracts. To top that, the father and son were under surveillance by the Scottish Drugs Enforcement Agency (D.E.A.) in Estonia where they were seen with Robert Wright and Les Brown. Brown and Wright are now waiting extradition to Estonia on a 2.4 million-pound heroin trafficking charge. Justin we know was still under investigation at the time of the shooting, but the surveillance had been taken off days earlier. Which was unfortunate, as four days before his death he had a visit by someone, who can’t be named, as he is charged with murder and a waiting trial. In court this witness stated how he visited Justin at his fathers Club the Sunday before his death, and was to “let him know that he was running out of time to pay the money up”. He owed this witness’s friend fifty thousand pounds. When we first wrote to William Gage we had to explain, that technically, he wasn’t actually a miscarriage of justice, as he hadn’t had a trial. But what we heard didn’t sit right, and we assured him we would monitor his progress. As in all of our cases, it’s the ingredients and quality of evidence, proof is in the pudding, and the taste is in the eating. So therefore, we had to wait until he went to court, and then we could all make our own minds up, and if Willie was telling the truth, or otherwise, it would soon come out in the wash. Well as we started to hear his story, things began to smell wrong right away, he had been waiting over 330 days after his indictment. Had an excellent lawyer in John MacAuley, whom Paddy and myself visited. It turned out that the delay was due to the crown holding up evidence, in relation to CCTV footage and witness statements. Willie changed his counsel a month before Christmas 2003, the trial then began on the 28th January 2004, 690 days after his arrest, going well over the 110-day rule. more