Allan Menzies and Thomas McKendrick were best friends in Fauldhouse, a village in West Lothian, Scotland. On December 11, 2002, after the two young men argued about a vampire film, Menzies killed his friend in the village. Menzies was a former security guard in his early twenties, and nothing in his life up to that winter had brought him before the High Court.
The case turned on a single question: whether Menzies was fully responsible for what he had done. He offered to admit culpable homicide, the crime in Scots law that sits below murder, on the ground that his responsibility had been diminished. The Crown refused the offer, and in October 2003 a jury at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh convicted him of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and ordered to serve at least 18 years before he could be considered for release. He served little more than a year of it. In November 2004, at 23, he died by suicide in custody, and a fatal accident inquiry into his death sat in 2006.
Menzies was 22 when he stood trial in the autumn of 2003 and 23 when he died a year later, which places his birth in about 1981. He came from Fauldhouse and had worked as a security guard before the killing. Little else about his early life came out in open court.
The friendship between the two men was close, and much of it was spent over computer games. A third young man from the village, called as a witness for the Crown, gave the jury a glimpse of how those evenings could go. Menzies, he said, often lost his temper while the pair played, and more than once threw the control unit at the wall.
The quarrel that ended the friendship was about a film. On December 11, 2002, the two men argued about it, and the argument ended in the death.
Police inquiries led to Menzies in January 2003, and he spoke to officers about what had happened. He was indicted for murder in the High Court of Justiciary, where the indictment alleged that he had murdered his friend in Fauldhouse on December 11, 2002. Menzies pleaded not guilty to the murder, and to a second charge of attempting to defeat the ends of justice.
Before the evidence began, the defense tried to settle the case. Menzies offered a plea of guilty to culpable homicide on the ground of diminished responsibility. The plea mattered because of what followed from it. A conviction for murder carried a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment, while for culpable homicide the judge would have had discretion over the sentence.
The Crown rejected the offer at the start of the trial, on Monday, September 29, 2003. Its answer was that Menzies was not insane, and the case went before a jury in Edinburgh. With the facts of the death largely beyond dispute, the trial became a contest over the state of Menzies's mind when his friend died.
The trial lasted a little under two weeks. On its second day the jury heard from the pathologist who had examined the victim. The friend from Fauldhouse also gave evidence for the Crown, describing the temper he had seen at close quarters. The jury was also told that Menzies had been described as having an anti-social psychopathic personality.
Menzies gave evidence in his own defense and told the court that a character from the film had told him to kill. That account was the foundation of his case that his responsibility was diminished, and it was for the jury to decide what weight, if any, it carried.
The jury of six men and nine women returned its verdict on Wednesday, October 8, 2003. It found Menzies guilty of murder, and he showed no reaction as the verdict was returned. The verdict rejected the case that his responsibility had been diminished, and with it the lesser crime of culpable homicide that the Crown had already refused to accept as a plea.
Because Menzies was over 21 when he was convicted, the law allowed the judge only one sentence: imprisonment for life. What remained to be fixed was the punishment part, the minimum term to be served for retribution and deterrence before the Parole Board could consider his case. The judge fixed it at 18 years.
Menzies began his life sentence in a Scottish prison in the autumn of 2003. In November 2004, at the age of 23, he died by suicide in custody. Prison authorities gave no cause of death at the time and opened an investigation.
Because he died in legal custody, his death was the subject of an inquiry under the Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths Inquiry (Scotland) Act 1976. The inquiry came before a sheriff court in March 2006. It examined the circumstances of his death, not the murder for which he had been convicted.
The claim that a film character directed the killing came only from Menzies, in his evidence at trial. It was never established as a fact. The jury's verdict of murder showed that it did not accept his state of mind as a ground for reducing the crime to culpable homicide, and no court ever found that his responsibility had been diminished.
About 1981: Allan Menzies is born; he grows up in Fauldhouse, West Lothian.
December 11, 2002: Menzies kills his best friend in Fauldhouse after an argument about a film.
January 2003: Police inquiries lead to Menzies, who is later indicted for murder.
September 29, 2003: The trial opens at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh; the Crown rejects his offered plea of guilty to culpable homicide on the ground of diminished responsibility.
September 30, 2003: The pathologist gives evidence on the second day of the trial.
October 8, 2003: A jury of six men and nine women finds Menzies guilty of murder.
October 2003: He is sentenced to life imprisonment with an 18-year punishment part.
November 2004: Menzies dies by suicide in custody, aged 23; prison authorities open an investigation.
March 2006: A fatal accident inquiry into his death comes before a sheriff court.