Louise Oakley was the junior for the Crown led by Tom Little QC before Mrs Justice McGowan at the Central Criminal Court. The defendant was charged with two separate murders committed in 1998 of Leonard Harris and Rose Seferian. Case made legal history when Weir was convicted as he is the first person ever to be convicted of the same murder twice!
Weir was originally convicted in July 1999 of the murder of Leonard Harris. That conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2000 on the basis that a DNA profile on the DNA database used for comparative purposes should not have been retained. In 2017 a match was found between Weir’s palm print at the Seferian crime scene. That in turn led to a reinvestigation of the Harris murder where it was discovered that a palm print inside the Harris home address matched Weir and advances in DNA meant that new DNA evidence was also found.
Prosecution put to strict proof regarding continuity of palm prints found a both crime scenes involving a painstaking analysis of historical records held by the fingerprint bureau.