McGuire ‘tried to cast dirt on her husband’
Lawyer questions DJ’s story
FORMER Clyde 1 DJ Suzie McGuire ‘ started her own campaign to cast dirt’ on her estranged husband by reporting him to police last year, a court heard yesterday.
Defending Derek Mitchell, solicitor advocate Billy Lavelle said there was a pattern of behaviour from Crown witnesses who gave evidence of ‘lies and fairytales and fabrication’.
He invited the jury to acquit Mitchell on the four assault charges and breach of the peace charge he faces at Paisley Sheriff Court.
Mr Lavelle said: ‘(Miss McGuire’s)
‘There is not a single independent witness’
supporting witnesses are all closely connected to her – there’s not a single independent witness, someone who is not closely connected.’
He told the jury they ‘ must find’ Miss McGuire a credible and reliable witness before they can convict his client.
Miss McGuire’s cousin Jacqueline Miller gave evidence to support the breach of the peace charge that, while on the phone to the DJ, she heard Mitchell banging on a door and told her cousin to phone the police.
Mr Lavelle pointed out that Mrs Miller did not tell the police this when she gave a statement last year and questioned her evidence. He said: ‘She hears banging on the door and and what does she do? She tells the person who is being threatened, and whose door is about to be kicked in, to phone the police, puts the phone down, and goes back to her dinner guests.’
Mr Lavelle said Miss McGuire alleged she was attacked by Mitchell on Christmas Eve 2009, leaving her with a ‘badly bitten face’.
But Mr Lavelle said police and a friend at the time, Laura McConnachie, along with Mitchell’s father Robert, saw no injury on her face after the alleged attack.
There was also no photo of the alleged injury shown to the jury after Miss McGuire claimed she had one, added Mr Lavelle, and no anger management book which she claimed belonged to Mitchell.
Miss McGuire claimed she was assaulted by a drunken Mitchell after the Eaglesham fair in May 2011 when he broke her finger, trying to grab keys from her, in front of her daughters.
‘She said: “The girls have to come here, they will say the same.”,’ said Mr Lavelle. ‘How will she know that without having spoken to them?’
He told the jury Miss McGuire’s comment about her son allegedly telling her that his father would shoot her was said for no reason ‘other than to get it in to try and influence you’.
He added that, as she had no ‘leverage’ over Mitchell, ‘she started her own campaign to cast as much dirt on him as she could’.
Mitchell denies all charges and the trial continues.