The Alex Salmond trial
Until today I had not posted anything about the Alex Salmon trial because, although what has happened is clearly going to have explosive consequences for Scottish politics, one has to be very careful commentating on court cases.
I made a brief and indirect reference to his acquittal in a post earlier today and it's probably appropriate to clarify it.
This country's legal system is built on the principle that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty, and if a jury clears someone of a charge, they must be treated as innocent.
The jury found the former first minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond to be not guilty on twelve of the thirteen charges made against him by nine women, the jury found the thirteenth charge "not proven" - which is a peculiar type of acquittal found in Scottish law but has the same legal effect as "not guilty" but tends to inflict more reputational damage to the accused and less to the prosecution witnesses. A fourteenth charge was dropped.
Therefore he has been cleared on all charges by a court. On the principles that the British legal system is built on, and which I believe in, that means he is innocent of those charges. And any post on the comments section of this blog which suggests otherwise will be deleted the instant I see it.
Equally, if someone is acquitted under a legal system built on the principle that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, that does not prove the prosecution witnesses to be liars. Only if charges for perjury are brought and someone is convicted of that charge can it be said that a court has proved a witness to be a liar.
Some of the "Cybernat" Scottish nationalist keyboard warriors have been posting the most disgusting things about the nine women who gave evidence against Alex Salmond. This is completely out of order.
If we as a society want to protect people from sexual abuse, we need genuine victims to come forward. If we allow partisan supporters of the accused - including an accused person who has been acquitted - to throw vile insults at people who have given evidence for the other side, at least where those witnesses have not been convicted of perjury, we make it much less likely that genuine victims will come forward because they will have reasonable grounds to fear that such abuse might be directed at them.
The things which various Cybernats have written about the women who gave evidence against the former first minister have unwittingly provided some of the strongest evidence I've ever seen for maintaining the anonymity of witnesses in trials for sexual offences.
In the vast majority of cases when charges are made against someone, and they are acquitted this is and should be the end of the matter.
But in this case the acquitted person himself clearly does not regard this as the end of the matter, and neither do his close allies, some of whom started calling within minutes of the verdict being announced for heads to roll in both the SNP and the Scottish government.
Kenny MacAskill MP (SNP) who is a former Scottish justice secretary called for resignations both on Twitter writing in The Scotsman, saying
"There do need to be resignations within the SNP," adding that the actions of a few people in seeking to "instigate" the prosecution had been "entirely unacceptable."
Edinburgh South West MP Joanna Cherry, the SNP’s justice and home affairs spokeswoman at Westminster, said an independent inquiry into the SNP’s handling of internal complaints against Mr Salmond was now required.
Ms Cherry, herself an advocate and former specialist sex crimes prosecutor, said women who make complaints in such cases must have this fully investigated, but added. But she said:
“I also support due process and the principle of innocent until proven guilty. “Some of the evidence that has come to light both in the judicial review and at this trial raise very serious questions over the process that was employed within the Scottish Government to investigate the alleged complaints against Mr Salmond and I am sorry to say some of the evidence also raises serious question marks over how these complaints were handled by the SNP.”
The inquiry which she is calling for into the SNP's handling of the matter would be in addition to a Scottish parliament inquiry into the handling of the matter by the Scottish government which has already been launched after Alec Salmond won a court ruling that the Scottish government's initial investigation of the allegation was flawed, following which they had to pay his legal costs of more than half a million pounds.
From a mainstream perspective, a very comprehensive article about the case, the background to it, and the possible consequences, was published today by Dani Garavelli, called
"Scotland after the Trial of Alex Salmond."
I had previously been told by various people who know Scotland well that in Garavelli's words,
"The Scottish establishment is a very small world,"
but nothing had brought this home to me as much are learning that Salmond's lead defence lawyer, Gordon Jackson, used to combine his legal career with serving in politics and was Labour Member of the Scottish Parliament for Govan until losing his seat in 2007 to - wait for it - Nicola Sturgeon.
You can read Dani Garavelli's piece here.
An alternative view - and how - but which gives you some idea about how the more outspoken supporters of Alex Salmond, and those who are sceptical of establishment views of any kind see the case, is provided by an article whose very title - "J'accuse" infers a comparison with the infamous Dreyfus affair in which trumped-up and false charges of treason were broad against a Jewish officer in the French army.
This article is the take on the trial of Craig Murray who was once a British ambassador but now describes himself as an "author, broadcaster and human rights activist" and it may be found on his blog here.
In posting that link I am not endorsing anything in the article - which will probably be a relief to Mr Murray who I doubt would welcome an endorsement from me - but I post it to give an idea what one pole of the spectrum of Scottish opinion appears to think about the case.
As mentioned above there is already an inquiry going on into how the Scottish government handled this and may well be more official inquiries yet. Good luck to whoever has to run them: getting to the bottom of this could be quite a challenge.
I made a brief and indirect reference to his acquittal in a post earlier today and it's probably appropriate to clarify it.
This country's legal system is built on the principle that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty, and if a jury clears someone of a charge, they must be treated as innocent.
The jury found the former first minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond to be not guilty on twelve of the thirteen charges made against him by nine women, the jury found the thirteenth charge "not proven" - which is a peculiar type of acquittal found in Scottish law but has the same legal effect as "not guilty" but tends to inflict more reputational damage to the accused and less to the prosecution witnesses. A fourteenth charge was dropped.
Therefore he has been cleared on all charges by a court. On the principles that the British legal system is built on, and which I believe in, that means he is innocent of those charges. And any post on the comments section of this blog which suggests otherwise will be deleted the instant I see it.
Equally, if someone is acquitted under a legal system built on the principle that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, that does not prove the prosecution witnesses to be liars. Only if charges for perjury are brought and someone is convicted of that charge can it be said that a court has proved a witness to be a liar.
Some of the "Cybernat" Scottish nationalist keyboard warriors have been posting the most disgusting things about the nine women who gave evidence against Alex Salmond. This is completely out of order.
If we as a society want to protect people from sexual abuse, we need genuine victims to come forward. If we allow partisan supporters of the accused - including an accused person who has been acquitted - to throw vile insults at people who have given evidence for the other side, at least where those witnesses have not been convicted of perjury, we make it much less likely that genuine victims will come forward because they will have reasonable grounds to fear that such abuse might be directed at them.
The things which various Cybernats have written about the women who gave evidence against the former first minister have unwittingly provided some of the strongest evidence I've ever seen for maintaining the anonymity of witnesses in trials for sexual offences.
In the vast majority of cases when charges are made against someone, and they are acquitted this is and should be the end of the matter.
But in this case the acquitted person himself clearly does not regard this as the end of the matter, and neither do his close allies, some of whom started calling within minutes of the verdict being announced for heads to roll in both the SNP and the Scottish government.
Kenny MacAskill MP (SNP) who is a former Scottish justice secretary called for resignations both on Twitter writing in The Scotsman, saying
"There do need to be resignations within the SNP," adding that the actions of a few people in seeking to "instigate" the prosecution had been "entirely unacceptable."
Edinburgh South West MP Joanna Cherry, the SNP’s justice and home affairs spokeswoman at Westminster, said an independent inquiry into the SNP’s handling of internal complaints against Mr Salmond was now required.
Ms Cherry, herself an advocate and former specialist sex crimes prosecutor, said women who make complaints in such cases must have this fully investigated, but added. But she said:
“I also support due process and the principle of innocent until proven guilty. “Some of the evidence that has come to light both in the judicial review and at this trial raise very serious questions over the process that was employed within the Scottish Government to investigate the alleged complaints against Mr Salmond and I am sorry to say some of the evidence also raises serious question marks over how these complaints were handled by the SNP.”
The inquiry which she is calling for into the SNP's handling of the matter would be in addition to a Scottish parliament inquiry into the handling of the matter by the Scottish government which has already been launched after Alec Salmond won a court ruling that the Scottish government's initial investigation of the allegation was flawed, following which they had to pay his legal costs of more than half a million pounds.
Without taking any view of the truth of the suggestion, it is somewhere between shocking and horrifying that the former head of a government can secure acquittal in a criminal trial on the basis of a defence which included the strong suggestion that powerful figures in the very government that he recently led have conspired to frame him. On the face of it that would appear to be either a shocking smear or a horrifying fact.
I am going to link to two very contrasting views of the case to give an idea of what sort of thing is being said, both from people who attended the trial.
"Scotland after the Trial of Alex Salmond."
I had previously been told by various people who know Scotland well that in Garavelli's words,
"The Scottish establishment is a very small world,"
but nothing had brought this home to me as much are learning that Salmond's lead defence lawyer, Gordon Jackson, used to combine his legal career with serving in politics and was Labour Member of the Scottish Parliament for Govan until losing his seat in 2007 to - wait for it - Nicola Sturgeon.
You can read Dani Garavelli's piece here.
An alternative view - and how - but which gives you some idea about how the more outspoken supporters of Alex Salmond, and those who are sceptical of establishment views of any kind see the case, is provided by an article whose very title - "J'accuse" infers a comparison with the infamous Dreyfus affair in which trumped-up and false charges of treason were broad against a Jewish officer in the French army.
This article is the take on the trial of Craig Murray who was once a British ambassador but now describes himself as an "author, broadcaster and human rights activist" and it may be found on his blog here.
In posting that link I am not endorsing anything in the article - which will probably be a relief to Mr Murray who I doubt would welcome an endorsement from me - but I post it to give an idea what one pole of the spectrum of Scottish opinion appears to think about the case.
As mentioned above there is already an inquiry going on into how the Scottish government handled this and may well be more official inquiries yet. Good luck to whoever has to run them: getting to the bottom of this could be quite a challenge.
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