A MAN who was found guilty of blinding another man with ammonia has seen his attempts at appeal turned down.

Lewis Chorlton, 29, was handed a 16-year sentence in 2016 after a jury found him guilty of spraying the liquid into the face of Michael Dunn in Nelson Square the year before.

The incident left Mr Dunn with no sight in one eye and he told the judge at the time, Graeme Smith, that he thought he was going to die.

Chorlton had asked the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal his conviction, claiming that the prosecution’s case against him rested on the word of Lauren Johnstone, who identified him as the attacker.

Ms Johnstone said she had known Chorlton for 18 years and had seen him a few weeks earlier in the town centre with his sister, Casey, and his niece, who had been in a pram.

However, the defendant’s appeal aimed to cast doubt on this after a private investigator found that Casey Chorlton had been at work during the days that she would have been seen in the town centre and that she had to drop her daughter off with her parents so would not have been able to go shopping in the town centre.

The prosecution disputed this by saying that electronic systems at Casey Chorlton’s place of work showed that her shift had not started until later in the day. Chorlton also claimed at the time of the initial trial that he had been with a prostitute called Jenny when Mr Dunn was attacked so it could not have been him.

Despite these assertions, Judge Robin Knowles threw the case out, saying the appeal was “not arguable”.

He pointed to the fact Casey Chorlton had already given evidence and that Ms Johnstone admitted she may have been wrong about the last time she had seen the defendant.

There was also a question over why police did not pursue further information from Edward Stanton, the doorman at Diamonds Nightclub, who had spoken to the suspects before the attack.

In response, Judge Knowles said: “The fact that the proposed witness Edward Stanton is unable to identify Mr Chorlton does not cast arguable doubt on the conclusion reached by the Jury on the evidence of identification they did have.”

In addition to asking for an appeal, Chorlton also applied for an extension of time to consider his appeal. This was made on the grounds that the judge in his initial case, Mr Smith, had wrongly labelled the ammonia as “acid” in his summing up.

However, three appeal judges, Lord Justice Holroyde, Mr Justice Martin Spencer and Judge Wall QC, concluded that these errors had not affected “the safety of the conviction” because the trial was about identity rather than the act itself.