On This Day

22 June 1979

Former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe is acquitted at the Old Bailey

The case arose from Thorpe’s relationship with Norman Scott who had claimed to have had a homosexual affair with Thorpe. It was alleged that Thorpe and others had hired or incited a man named Andrew Newton to kill Scott in an incident when Newton threatened Scott with a gun and shot Scott’s dog. The jury was supposedly first tied 6-6, despite a summing up by Mr Justice Cantley highly favourable to Thorpe, but finally returned not guilty verdicts on the charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to murder for Thorpe and his three co-defendants.

Related histories

• Jeremy Thorpe, 1929-2014