A convicted murderer who stabbed a man to death has been slammed by the victim's family as he launches a justice campaign.
Sean Toal served 15 years in prison for stabbing 20-year-old Paul Gerard McGilvray to death in the street in Coatbridge in 2004.
The 38-year-old has always maintained his innocence, taking Paul Gerard’s family to court a record 36 times in a bid to overturn his conviction.
Less than three years after his release, brazen Toal has completed a law degree and is preparing to launch his own crime podcast, the Daily Record reports.
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Toal is now focused on highlighting “miscarriages of justice” and campaigning for prison reforms, also pledging his support for Jodi Jones’s killer, Luke Mitchell.
The heartbroken family of Paul Gerard have claimed Toal’s campaign is causing them anguish.
A spokesman for the family told the Record: “As far as we’re concerned Sean Toal is the convicted murderer of Paul Gerard. He can kid himself on and everyone else with what he’s doing but at the end of the day he’s nothing but a cold-blooded convicted killer who has shown not an ounce of remorse for his victim’s family.
“He’s apparently fighting for justice but he never once accepted his own justice.”
Apprentice panel beater Paul Gerard, known as PG, was knifed repeatedly in the head and chest by Toal in an unprovoked attack after arriving at a party to collect his girlfriend.
The Crown withdrew charges against two other men and a jury found the case against another not proven.
Toal appealed his conviction, despite boasting at the time of how he enjoyed attacking Paul. He admitted injuring Paul Gerard but claimed he did not inflict the fatal wound.
Toal’s legal team argued the conviction was unsafe on a string of grounds, but their bid to overturn his guilty verdict was rejected in 2012 – after six years of court hearings. His legal aid bill at that point was understood to be about £100,000.
The appeal judges stated there was a “cogent and logical case against the appellant that the jury were entitled to accept”.
Paul Gerard’s mum, Roslyn, previously told the Record he had been the “best son I could have hoped for”.
Now Toal is campaigning to convince people of his innocence.
Toal told the Record: “I am starting my podcast to raise awareness and highlight issues relating to justice, prison reform and mental health.
“I aim to offer an alternative narrative to most other podcasts on this subject that tend to glamorise lives of crime and time spent in prison.”
In a Twitter post Toal described himself as a “politics campaigner for prison reform” and said he was raising awareness of addiction recovery and “judicial injustice”.
In a recent tweet he described the case of Mitchell as a “blatant miscarriage of justice”. Mitchell was convicted of the murder of Jodi, 14, in Dalkeith, Midlothian, in June 2003. He has had several appeals rejected.
