Woman who killed man in frenzied knife attack loses bid to quash murder conviction

A woman serving life for participating in a “frenzied” knife attack alongside her then-partner has failed in a bid to have her murder conviction quashed.

Stacey Balfour, 25, was ordered to serve a minimum of 16 years for her role in the death of Robert Fisher, 26.

Mr Fisher was found critically injured in a flat on Maxwellton Street in Paisley on July 23, 2023.

He died in hospital four days later.

A jury at the High Court in Glasgow, found Balfour and her then-partner Cameron Woods guilty of murder following a trial.

Prosecutors said Woods fatally stabbed Mr Fisher while Balfour was “acting in concert” with him.

Jurors initially convicted Woods of murder and convicted Balfour on the lesser charge of culpable homicide.

Trial judge Lady Hood found the verdict against Balfour to be legally incompetent – in law, if Balfour had acted in concert with Woods in a murderous attack, she could not competently be convicted of culpable homicide while he was convicted of murder.

Lady Hood then invited the jurors to reconsider their verdict on Balfour after giving them further directions in law.

This resulted in the jury convicting Balfour of murder.

At the time, Balfour’s lawyer said the most appropriate course of action, in light of the culpable homicide verdict, was to record an acquittal.

That motion was refused by Lady Hood who sent the jury back out to reconsider their verdict on Balfour after giving them further directions in law.

Lawyers for Balfour believe she suffered a miscarriage of justice.

Earlier this year, defence lawyer Thomas Ross KC addressed judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal and argued that his client should not have been convicted of murder.

He said: “It’s clear, in my submission, that when the jury returned and attempted to convict Stacey Balfour by majority of culpable homicide, then they intended it to be a final verdict.

“My starting point is that the jury intended to convict her of culpable homicide.”

However, in a written judgment published on Tuesday, appeal judges Lord Beckett, Lady Wise and Lady Carmichael upheld Balfour’s conviction for murder.

Lord Beckett, who wrote the opinion, concluded that Lady Hood followed correct legal procedures and that the jury was entitled to convict Balfour of murder on the evidence available to them.

Lord Beckett wrote: “It seems clear that the jury considered the appellant to bear joint criminal responsibility for Mr Wood’s murderous assault.

“In a situation where the purported verdict did not signal that the jury had reached a final verdict of acquittal, and the ‘verdict’ was inconsistent with her directions, the judge was entitled and, in our view, correct to invite the jury to retire and reconsider their verdict.

“There is no miscarriage of justice and the appeal against conviction is refused.”

Lord Beckett added: “She participated in the attack. There is no indication that she sought to restrain her co-accused. “She did nothing to seek assistance for their victim, instead removing herself from the scene along with her co-accused before attempting to run away from the police.

“Far from showing immediate remorse, she misled the police in their investigations.

“Allowing for her status as a first offender, her difficult background, that she fell within the ambit of the Sentencing Young People guideline (towards the upper end of its scope) and the importance of her being a parent of a young child, we are not persuaded that a punishment part of 16 years for her significant role in this vicious murder, committed with her knife, and for which she showed no remorse, was excessive.

“The appeal against sentence is refused.”