30 years on convicted thief is desperate to clear name

A MAN jailed for the armed robbery of a postal van is still fighting to clear his name almost 30 years after he was convicted.

William Beck, 50, from Glasgow, spent four years in prison after a jury found him guilty of the robbery involving a hammer in Livingston in December 1981, when around 21,000 in cash was stolen from two postal workers.

But the father-of-two has always maintained that he was 40 miles away in Glasgow when the incident took place.

He claims his conviction in March 1982, when he was 21, was based almost entirely on "unreliable" eyewitness identification, and says he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Mr Beck claims only two of the five witnesses identified him in an identity parade. The other three are said to have picked out a volunteer.

Leave to appeal the conviction was refused in 1982 after his defence lawyer is alleged to have said he had no grounds for appeal. Mr Beck claims his defence team called none of his witnesses during the trial at the High Court in Edinburgh, giving him "no chance".

He said: "I had a number of people who had seen me in Glasgow that day. My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, was called and she gave evidence that I had been with her all day."

Mr Beck, who lives with his wife Louise in the Dennistoun area of the city, added: "All I want is to be allowed an appeal, I just want to clear my name.

"I did not commit that robbery, and it is something that has now taken over my whole adult life."

The University of Bristol Innocence Project (UoBIP) has taken on Mr Beck's case and today submitted a response on his behalf following two rejections by the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission to review his case.

UoBIP said eyewitness misidentification has been accepted worldwide as a leading cause of wrongful convictions. It says around 75 per cent of post-conviction DNA exonerations in the US are attributed to eyewitness misidentification.