Oscar Slater
Oscar Joseph Slater (8 January 1872 – 1948) was a victim of miscarriage of justice. He was born Oscar Leschziner in Oppeln, Upper Silesia, Germany to a Jewish family. Around 1893, to evade military service, he moved to London where he worked as a bookmaker using various names, including Anderson, before settling on Slater for official purposes. He was prosecuted for malicious wounding in 1896 and assault in 1897 but was acquitted in both cases.[1]
In 1899 he moved to Edinburgh and by 1901 was living in Glasgow. He claimed to be a gymnastics instructor, a dentist, and a dealer in precious stones but was known to police as a pimp [2] and gangster who associated with thieves, burglars, and receivers of stolen goods.[1]
Marion Gilchrist
In December 1908 Marion Gilchrist, an 83 year old spinster, was beaten to death in a robbery at West Princes Street, Glasgow after her maid had popped out for 10 minutes.[3] Despite the fact that she had £3,000 (2009:£230,000) of jewellry hidden in her wardrobe,[4] the robber was disturbed by a neighbour [3] and all that was taken was a brooch. Slater had left for New York five days after the murder and came under suspicion as, before the murder, a caller to Gilchrist's house had been looking for someone called 'Anderson', and Slater had previously been seen trying to sell a pawn ticket for a brooch.[1]
Trial of Oscar Slater
The police soon realised that the pawn ticket was a false lead but still applied for Slater's extradition. Slater was advised that the application would probably fail, but, in any case, decided to return voluntarily to Scotland. At his trial, defence witnesses provided Slater with an alibi and confirmed that he had announced his visit to America long before the murder.[2] He was convicted by a majority of nine to six (five ‘not proven’ and one ‘not guilty’).[1] In May 1909 he was sentenced to death, the execution to take place before the end of the month.[5] However, the trial judge, Lord Guthrie organised a petition, signed by 20,000 people [4] and the secretary for Scotland, Lord Pentland, issued a conditional pardon and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.[1]
The following year Scottish lawyer and amateur criminologist, William Roughead, published his Trial of Oscar Slater highlighting flaws in the prosecution. The circumstantial evidence against Slater included his ‘flight from justice’; while the Jury had been made aware of his entire past life; The identification evidence was fleeting and otherwise unreliable, prejudiced, tainted, or coached. In particular Slater was conspicuously contrasted with nine off-duty policemen in his identification parade.[1]
The Case of Oscar Slater
Roughead's book convinced many of Slater's innocence; influential people included Sir Edward Marshall Hall; Ramsay MacDonald; (eventually) Viscount Buckmaster; and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.[1] In 1912, Conan Doyle published The Case of Oscar Slater, a plea for a full pardon for Slater.[4]
In 1914 Thomas MacKinnon Wood ordered a Private Inquiry into the case. A detective in the case, John Thompson Trench, provided information which had allegedly been concealed from the trial by the police. The Inquiry found that the conviction was sound and, instead, Trench, was dismissed from the force and prosecuted on a trumped-up charges.[1]
Criminal Appeal (Scotland) Act 1927
Finally, in 1927 the publication of The Truth about Oscar Slater by William Park proved decisive. Solicitor General for Scotland, Alexander Munro MacRobert, reported to Sir John Gilmour, that it was no longer proven that Slater was guilty.[1] An Act (17 & 18 Geo. V) was passed to extend the Jurisdiction of the the recently established Scottish Court of Criminal Appeal to convictions before the original shut-off date of 1926. Slater's conviction was quashed in July 1928 on the ground that the judge had not directed the jury about the irrelevance of Slater's previous character. Slater received £6000 (2009:£270,000) compensation [1]
Aftermath
As an enemy alien, Slater was interned for a brief time at the start of WWII. He died in 1948. Detective-Lieutenant Trench had died in 1919, aged fifty, and never lived to see Justice done.[1]
The lessons of the Slater miscarriage were considered as late as 1976 by the Devlin Committee review on the limitations of identity parades.
In Glasgow rhyming slang See you "Oscar" rhymes Slater with later. [6]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Leslie William Blake, 'Slater, Oscar Joseph (1872–1948)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
- ^ a b The Times, Glasgow Murder Trial 6 May 1909
- ^ a b The Times, The Case Of Oscar Slater. Sir Herbert Stephen And The Evidence, 19 September 1912
- ^ a b c The Times, "The Case of Oscar Slater," 21 August 1912
- ^ The Times, Index 7 May 1909
- ^ The Herald Punting across the great divide 13 January 1998