1927 murder case 'unsafe', court told

The conviction of a young miner hanged 75 years ago for cutting his mother's throat was unsafe, the Court of Appeal heard yesterday.

William Knighton, 22, was found guilty after a one-day trial on 26 February 1927 at Derby Assizes of the murder of 55-year-old Ada Knighton as she lay in bed at their home in Ilkeston, Derbyshire. He was sentenced to death and executed at Nottingham prison two months later, after his appeal was rejected.

In 1999, a niece of Knighton, now in her eighties and still living in the Ilkeston area, took new evidence about police testimony to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which referred the case to the Court of Appeal.

Shaun Smith, for Knighton, told Lord Justice Judge, sitting with Mr Justice Butterfield and Mr Justice McCombe, that it was a case without any witnesses and would involve the court analysing statements and other documentation.

Opening the oldest case to be referred by the Commission since its formation in 1997, Mr Smith said Knighton had told police: "I have done the old woman in." He said he had cut her throat with a razor which was lying at the side of the bed and that he had been drinking.

The police learnt that Mrs Knighton had been asleep in bed with her 16-year-old daughter, Doris, when the murder was committed. Doris said she was woken in the early hours by her mother moaning and struggling but that was half an hour before her brother came into the room at 1.45am – which was about two and a half hours before the estimated time of her mother's death.

Knighton's defence was one of insanity on the basis of epileptic automatism, meaning he could not remember anything that night. The current appeal hinged on bloodstains found at the scene.

The judges said the chance of giving their ruling before the end of the legal term, next Wednesday, was "in reality non-existent". It is likely to be delivered in the first few weeks of October.