Luke Mitchell has failed to overturn his conviction for the murder of his 14-year-old girlfriend Jodi Jones in 2003.
At the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh on Friday May 16, judges took just 20 minutes to reject his appeal.
Jodi's naked, bound and mutilated body was found in June 2003 in woods beside a path which joined her house in Easthouses with the Mitchell hom
e in Newbattle.
Mitchell - also 14 at the time of the murder - was charged and eventually brought to trial at the High Court in Edinburgh the following November.
Scotland's top judge, Lord Justice General Lord Hamilton, sitting with Lords Osborne and Kingarth, spent weeks scrutinising Mitchell's claims that he did not get a fair trial before announcing that the guilty verdict should stand.
HostileHowever, they condemned the way police questioned Mitchell in the wake of the killing as "outrageous."
The judges said detectives were not interested in his answers to their questions but carried out an "overbearing and hostile interrogation" in a bid to make him confess.
"Some of the questions put by the interviewing police officer can only be described as outrageous," said Lord Hamilton.
But the judges said their criticisms did not amount to a miscarriage of justice.
Mitchell's mother Corinne left court saying: "Luke is innocent. The fight goes on."
Full report in Midlothian Advertiser, May 22, 2008 The full article contains 233 words and appears in n/a newspaper.
