New CCTV challenges prison officers’ account of Allan Marshall’s death

Previously unseen CCTV shows Allan Marshall walking calmly through HMP Edinburgh for about four minutes before the restraint that ended in his death, undermining the prison officers’ account of what happened to the 30-year-old. Marshall, from South Lanarkshire, died on 28 March 2015 after a 40-minute restraint involving up to 17 prison officers.

Marshall had been on remand at HMP Edinburgh, also known as Saughton, for unpaid fines and breach of the peace. The newly obtained footage shows him leaving his cell at 07:25 and entering the shower room at 07:29, lightly guided by three guards. The restraint outside the shower room began at 07:48. Until now, public footage had covered only the struggle outside the shower room, not the earlier movements that led to it.

That missing stretch matters because it sits at the centre of the officers’ account. The new images appear to contradict claims that Marshall had smashed up his cell, covered himself in excrement and behaved erratically before being taken to the shower room. Instead, the video shows him walking calmly through the prison.

Marshall died four days after the restraint, after suffering brain damage caused by oxygen starvation and cardiac arrest. A Fatal Accident Inquiry later found his death was “entirely preventable” and said officers’ evidence was “mutually and consistently dishonest.” The inquiry’s language turned the case into one of the sharpest rebukes ever issued over a death in custody in Scotland.

The Scottish Prison Service later admitted causing Marshall’s death through “unnecessary and excessive forcible restraint.” In the same year, the Crown Office and Police Scotland admitted failing to properly investigate the death and ensure accountability. Lawyers for Marshall’s family said the case took on added significance because it led to an unprecedented corporate homicide investigation into the Scottish Prison Service.

That investigation was triggered in March 2023, when prosecutors instructed Police Scotland to examine the prison service’s corporate responsibility, including corporate homicide, over Marshall’s death. BBC News was forced to take Scottish ministers to court earlier in 2026 after they initially refused to release the pre-restraint CCTV.

Marshall’s family, including his aunt Sharon MacFadyen and brother Alistair Marshall, have spent more than a decade pressing for answers. The latest footage now places the focus back on the timeline inside Saughton, and on whether internal investigations into custody deaths can be trusted when the video record tells a different story.