Scotland's Shame by Ashton John

Author:Ashton, John [Ashton, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857906427
Publisher: Birlinn

The Crown out of Control 7

As Scotland’s sole prosecuting authority, the Crown Office is meant to be an impartial guardian of justice. Unfortunately, as the SCCRC report laid bare, it repeatedly obstructed justice by failing in its duty to disclose evidence that was favourable to the accused.EN40 Since Megrahi’s case was referred to the appeal court in 2007, it has often appeared desperate to salvage the conviction and its own reputation. Its legal foot-dragging and distorted public statements have brought further shame upon the Scottish criminal justice system.

Following the referral, Megrahi was legally entitled to submit as many grounds of appeal as he wished. His draft grounds, which were lodged with the high court on 21 December 2007, contained more than the six identified by the SCCRC. The day before, however, Crown counsel, Ronnie Clancy QC, announced to the court that the Crown would seek to restrict the grounds to those six, despite there being no Scottish legal precedent for doing so.EN41

It would be a further ten months before the judges ruled on the matter, rejecting the Crown’s arguments. During that time the Crown attempted to prevent disclosure of previously unseen documents and, more surprisingly, argued that Megrahi’s team should be denied what would normally have been routine access to forensic items – and other evidence – that had featured in the original trial. In attempting to block access to the forensic evidence it argued that its forensic case had already been judged to be sound by both the SCCRC and forensic experts instructed by the defence pre-trial. 1 This was wholly misleading, as the SCCRC had only investigated the provenance of a few forensic items and neither it, nor the original defence experts, had considered any of the forensic arguments in the draft grounds of appeal.

Even after the Crown had failed to restrict the scope of the appeal, it was very slow in meeting its disclosure obligations. It was not until December 2008 that it handed over 7,000 police statements, many of which were previously undisclosed,2 and even then around 400 of those that were supposed to have been included were missing.3 Further statements were provided during 2009, but by the time Megrahi returned to Libya in August, much material remained undisclosed. This included eight boxes of files from RARDE, which were not handed over until two months after Megrahi’s return.

In March 2012, shortly after the publication of my book Megrahi: You Are My Jury, with Megrahi’s blessing I gave a copy of the SCCRC report to the Herald newspaper, which ran consecutive front page spreads on 13 and 14 March; the first highlighting the Crown’s failure to disclose important evidence and the second reporting the commission’s implicit criticism of the former Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC. A reliable source told me that the articles caused consternation and panic in the Crown Office. Whether this is true or not, its behaviour became increasingly undignified and divorced from reality. Ten days after the Herald articles, its sister paper, the Sunday Herald, notified the Crown Office that it would be publishing the report itself.

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