Lee Clegg was one of a group of British paratroopers who opened fire on a stolen car on the Glen Road in west Belfast on the night of September 30th, 1990. Two of the three teenage occupants of the car were killed.
In August 1991 he was charged with the murder of the back-seat passenger, an 18-year-old local girl, Karen Reilly.
In June 1993 Cpl Clegg was found guilty of the murder. A second soldier was found guilty of the attempted murder of Martin Peake (17), the driver of the car, who also died. Mr Justice Campbell found that three of the four shots fired at the car by Cpl Clegg were lawful, but that the fourth, one of two which killed Karen Reilly, had been unjustified.
Cpl Clegg immediately lodged an appeal against the conviction, but in March 1994 it was dismissed. A second appeal to the House of Lords the following year was also rejected.
He was subsequently transferred from prison in Belfast to Wakefield Prison near his mother's home in Bradford, England. His supporters started a vigorous campaign to clear his name and, amid intense public pressure, the case was referred to the Northern Ireland Life Sentence Review Board by Sir Patrick Mayhew, then Northern Ireland secretary.
The decision to release Cpl Clegg from prison on licence in July 1995 led to some of the worst unrest seen in Northern Ireland for years. In November of the same year he was promoted lance corporal within the British army, which provoked outrage in nationalist circles.
In 1997 he lodged the third appeal, armed with fresh ballistics evidence. He was granted a retrial which began in November 1998.
In March last year Cpl Clegg was acquitted of murdering Karen Reilly but was called a liar by Mr Justice Kerr. He was also convicted on a new count, that of attempting to wound Martin Peake. Last June he received a four-year sentence.
It is this conviction which was overturned in the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal yesterday, almost 10 years after Karen Reilly and Martin Peake were killed.