Maze escapee disputes scar confession in appeal over IRA murder
A MAN who claimed he was scarred while carrying out an IRA murder did not have the wound during body examinations following the attack, the Court of Appeal has heard.
Lawyers for Kevin Barry Artt argued that the absence of the wound on his left palm at that time undermined the reliability of his confession for the killing of Maze Prison deputy governor Albert Miles.
The 60-year-old, who escaped and fled to the United States after being jailed for the shooting, is seeking to overturn his conviction for murder.
Mr Miles was gunned down in front of his wife at their north Belfast home in November 1978.
Artt was convicted of the murder in 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Later that year he joined 37 other inmates involved in a mass IRA escape from the Maze and moved to America.
Artt, who has remained in California, is now pursuing an appeal lodged before the prison breakout.
His lawyers claim police conduct during his interrogation and flaws in the trial process render the murder conviction unsafe. Alleged irregularities in an admission to the murder he made during police interviews in 1981 are central to the appeal.
In his admission three years after the murder he stated that a mark on his left palm was caused by flying glass in the shooting. Artt claimed at the time that God gave him the scar to remind him that he killed a man.
But the court was told yesterday that custody record body charts and Army medical records from the weeks and months after the killing made no reference to the marking.
The hearing continues.