Crime and punishment – Page 2 – Seán Crossan's Scots Law

Go to jail?

Photo by 🇨🇭 Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash

Young offenders?

Well, not if you’re under 25 according to recent proposals published by the Scottish Sentencing Council as part of a public consultation process. The main function of the Scottish Sentencing Council is to demystify sentencing decisions and, therefore, educate the public about these matters.

The current proposal might seem very provocative and is bound to divide public opinion. Crime, after all, is a very emotive issue and everyone has an opinion about it whether you have been the victim or the criminal. The purpose of criminal law is about the State punishing those individuals who have broken the rules of the community by engaging in dangerous and/or anti-social activities.

The rationale for the Scottish Sentencing Council’s proposal is that scientific research (carried out by the University of Edinburgh) seems to show that the brains of people aged under 25 years have not fully developed i.e. matured.

Now, it is by no means certain that such a proposal will be implemented and the Scottish Sentencing Council is urging members of the public to respond to its consultation with their opinions on the matter.

https://consultations.scottishsentencingcouncil.org.uk/ssc/young-people/

It is certainly part of a wider strategy which fits in with attempts by the Scottish Government to reduce the numbers of people who are sent to prison each year. There is now perhaps a recognition that prison doesn’t always work. There has been a presumption operating for several years in Scotland, that people will not be sent to prison if the offence would normally be punished by a sentence of less than 6 months. Obviously, this presumption would be ignored if, for example, the offender was a person who persistently broke the rules.

Over the last year, this Blog has looked at a number of initiatives which have taken place which have been about taking different approaches to crime prevention or the rehabilitation of offenders.

In the Autumn (or Fall), I spoke to a group of students about an initiative called the “Call-In-Scheme” where Avon and Somerset Police in England were targeting first offenders aged between 16 and 21 who have been caught dealing drugs. The choice: go to court, be convicted with all the consequences this outcome will entail or go straight. Participants in the scheme were be selected by a panel. Predictably, such an approach sharply divided my audience.

Crime and kindness?

Last March, two American judges – Victoria Pratt and Ginger Lerner-Wren we’re invited to Scotland by Community Justice Scotland, a publicly funded body, where they were hoping to meet hundreds of people who deal with the Scottish criminal justice system.

The two judges were keen to emphasise that there should be more compassion in the criminal justice system when dealing with offenders. They pointed to impressive results in the United States – a New York court alone has seen a dramatic decrease of 20% in youth crime and a 10% reduction in crime overall by using radical methods to deal with offenders. One of the judges, Ginger Lerner-Wren established one of the first mental health courts anywhere in the world. The aim of this court (based in Florida) was to promote treatment of offenders as an alternative to traditional forms of punishment. Judge Pratt, on the other hand, specialises in “procedural justice” which works on the basis “that if people before the courts perceive they are being treated fairly and with dignity and respect, they’ll come to respect the courts, complete their sentences and be more likely to obey the law.”

The Glasgow Alcohol Court

This type of approach has already being piloted in Scotland: Sheriffs in Glasgow deal with cases where alcohol is a ‘contributory factor’ in crime. The Sheriff Alcohol Court has been operating since 2018 and its lifespan was extended in 2019. It now deals with domestic abuse cases involving alcohol. Punishments other than prison sentences are handed out by this court e.g. drug and alcohol treatment orders and community service orders. This approach recognises that criminals can turn their lives around and can become law abiding members of society. Being given a drug treatment order is not an easy option. Participants in schemes such as these are regularly tested and monitored. Break the rules and you will go to jail.

Age of criminal responsibility

In Scotland, in common with many penal systems around the world, we do use a person’s age to determine criminal responsibility. Currently, the age of criminal responsibility is 12 and there is a debate about whether this should be raised even higher. It is worth remembering that, for many years (until 2019 in fact), Scotland had one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility anywhere in the Western World i.e. 8 years of age.

Somewhat mitigating this feature of Scottish criminal law was the fact that children were not tried in adult courts. The Children’s Hearing or Panel system was primarily set up for this very purpose. It was considered a revolutionary approach because it recognised that by stigmatising (and criminalising) children at a very early age, society could set them on a path from which there was no means of redemption. If you effectively abandoned a child at an early age, you were condemning them to a very grim future where they could (potentially) be in and out of prison for the rest of their lives.

Conclusion

The Scottish Sentencing Council’s proposal is very interesting and it will certainly form part of a lively discussion on how we continue to deal with crime in this country. The public now has 12 weeks to get involved in the consultation by giving their opinions on the matter.

It is important to appreciate that, under the proposals, judges will still be able to send people under 25 to prison if they think this is an appropriate punishment. What the proposals are allowing judges to do is to look more closely at a young person’s background e.g. mental health issues before sentence is passed. It remains the case that, where certain crimes are concerned, the imposition of a prison sentence will be most the appropriate action to take because the issue of public safety will be paramount. Clearly, someone like the notorious child killer Aaron Campbell, will not benefit from the proposals merely because they are under the age of 25.

A link to an article on the BBC News app about theScottish Sentencing Council’s proposal can be found below:

Draft sentencing guidelines say younger offenders should be treated differently because their brains are still developing.

Scottish courts urged not to jail ‘immature’ under-25s

Related Blog Articles:

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/05/08/the-age-of-criminal-responsibility/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/02/27/criminal-responsibility/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/03/12/crime-and-kindness/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/02/19/dealing-with-alcohol-abuse/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/08/30/once-a-criminal/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/03/04/commit-the-crime-do-the-time/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/04/02/victims-voices/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/06/13/doing-time/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/03/22/life-should-mean-life/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2017/04/04/scottish-criminal-appeals/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/01/29/crime-and-punishment-in-scotland/

Copyright Seán J Crossan, 28 February 2020

Oh brother!

**Photo by Seán J Crossan (Card design by M&S)**

Apparently, the Chinese have a proverb which translates something along the following lines: the Devil gives you your family; thank all Gods that you can choose your friends!

Quite an apt statement to lead me into my next blog. Families can be great; they can also be problematic. This point is emphasised by reference to a recent decision of the Appeal Court of the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh.

In Michael Scott Ritchie v Her Majesty’s Advocate [2020] HCJAC 7 HCA2019/327/X, the Appeal Court had to consider whether a Sheriff sitting at Elgin had misdirected the jury and, consequently, a miscarriage of justice had occurred.

The convicted person or appellant, Michael Ritchie, certainly thought so. He had appeared at Elgin Sheriff Court in 2019, charged on indictment in respect of the following matters:

“on 11 or 12 May 2018 you … did break into the dwelling house owned by [JR] … at Strathville, South Street, Forres, Moray and steal a quantity of jewellery, medals, coins and a box;

You … did commit this offence while on bail, having been granted bail on 15 June 2017 at Elgin Sheriff Court.”

He was convicted of the offences libelled above after the conclusion of a solemn (jury) trial and sentenced to 21 months in prison (3 months of which were for the bail violation).

Part of the evidence put forward to convict Ritchie by the Depute Procurator Fiscal (the prosecutor for the benefit of our non-Scottish readers) was a small black torch which was found at the locus of the crime. The item was not a possession of the householder. The torch contained traces of Ritchie’s DNA and he admitted that the item belonged to him. ‘Ritchie further admitted that he had been about 150 yards from the vicinity of the crime scene, but he strongly asserted that he was not guilty of any offence.

DNA – infallible evidence?

This is where the case gets quite interesting: Ritchie stated that although his DNA was on the torch, he had not committed the crime of house-breaking (or burglary as our friends from common law jurisdictions would say). He was not responsible for leaving it at the locus.

In other words, Ritchie was contending that, merely because his DNA happened to be on the torch found at the crime scene, this in itself was not conclusive evidence of his guilt. Ritchie, of course, was using a special defence available in Scots Law known as incrimination – he was claiming that someone else [his brother] had committed the offence. Interestingly, Ritchie’s brother had previous convictions for theft, but these had involved commercial premises.

He further asserted that he may have loaned a torch to his brother in the last month or so. He contended that the torch given to his brother was a black rubber one. Unfortunately, for Ritchie the torch found at the locus was a black metallic item.

When speaking to students about the issue of corroboration in criminal law, I often ask them which sources of evidence might be used by a prosecutor to help secure a conviction? DNA evidence will almost always feature in the range of answers that I am given.

… but I should urge caution: it’s not an infallible source of evidence. It has to be put in context and the onus (or burden) about what the DNA tells the Court i.e. whether it can point the way to the accused being guilty beyond reasonable doubt remains very much the responsibility of the prosecution (or Crown).

The role of the Sheriff and the jury

In a solemn trial, there is a strict division of responsibility: the jury is regarded as Master of the facts; whereas the Sheriff is Master of the law.

The jury will, therefore, determine the guilt or innocence of the accused based upon the evaluation of the evidence presented during the trial. The burden of proof rests with the prosecutor (representing the Crown or the State) in that s/he must convince the jury that the accused is guilty of the charge(s) contained in the indictment.

When summarising the evidence that has been presented to the court, the Sheriff must do so in a way that avoids the introduction of bias. The jury must be able to come to its own determination of the facts.

If guilt is established, it is then the task of the Sheriff to impose the appropriate sentence – usually at a subsequent hearing (for which there is no need for the jury to be present).

The Appeal

The main thrust of Ritchie’s appeal to the High Court in Edinburgh was that the Sheriff had misdirected the jury which led to him being wrongly convicted.

Sadly, for Ritchie, the Appeal Court did not agree.

Statements by the Procurator Fiscal Depute concerning the veracity of Ritchie’s responses during a Police interview did not suggest that the onus was now placed on the defence to prove his innocence. An accused in a Scottish criminal trial is under no obligation to prove his/her innocence. Innocence is, after all, presumed and it remains the task for the prosecution to prove guilt.

Lord Carloway, the Lord Justice General, giving the opinion of the Appeal Court noted:

‘… that the sheriff made it clear that the onus remained on the Crown and that there was no such onus on the defence. The sheriff’s reference to hypothetical situations was merited in the circumstances. Anything said by the PFD [Procurator Fiscal Depute] was adequately covered by the sheriff in her general directions on onus; the sheriff being in the best position to determine what was required in order to correct any misconception that the jury might have had from what the PFD had said.’

Regarding the presence of the torch (belonging to the accused) at the locus, this was in itself a ‘highly incriminatory’ fact. Significantly, Ritchie had not identified the item when presented during his trial as being the torch that he claimed to have previously supplied to his brother.

In reviewing the testimony of the expert witnesses who spoke to the DNA evidence at the trial, Lord Carloway had the following to say:

‘Expert evidence about the deposit of DNA was led by both the Crown and the defence. There were various scenarios put to the experts about how DNA can be deposited, how long it could remain, how it could be transferred and whether it was primary or secondary. The sheriff described all of this evidence as essentially common sense. There was, however, a disagreement between the experts in relation to four peaks, which had been identified from the DNA print-out upon testing.’

The four peaks could either be artefacts (the Crown) or DNA belonging to an unknown person or persons (the defence).

The Crown submitted in its argument to the Appeal Court that the Sheriff had correctly emphasised to the jury “to scrutinise the evidence with care and be satisfied that there was an evidential basis for the submissions which had been made to them.”

Taking all of the above matters into consideration, there was no evidence to suggest that Michael Ritchie had suffered a miscarriage of justice and his appeal was refused.

A link to the judgement of the Appeal Court can be found below:

https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/cos-general-docs/pdf-docs-for-opinions/2020hcjac7.pdf?sfvrsn=0

Related Blog Articles:

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2020/01/09/down-with-corroboration-i-say/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2020/01/02/presumption-of-innocence/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/04/22/scrap-corroboration/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/12/28/alexa-theres-been-a-murder/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2019/03/01/corroboration/

https://seancrossansscotslaw.com/2017/04/04/scottish-criminal-appeals/

The burden of proof

Photo by JJ Jordan on Unsplash

In Chapter 1 of Introductory Scots Law, I discuss the differences between criminal and civil law. A discussion point which often arises in my lectures with students is the difference in the standard of proof in criminal and civil trials.

In a criminal trial, the onus or burden of proof is very much the prosecutor’s responsibility. In other words, the prosecutor must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty.

By complete contrast, in civil litigation, the onus or burden of proof is placed on the shoulders of the pursuer (or the claimant). S/he must show, on the balance of probabilities, that the basis of the claim is stronger or more credible than that of the defender (or respondent).

The criminal standard of proof is of a much higher standard than the civil burden of proof. I think this can be easily justified given the consequences of someone being convicted of a crime: the sanctions are much more serious and potentially longer lasting.

So far so good: most First Year Law students can grasp the distinction between the different standards of proof or evidence.

Difficulties tend to arise when students encounter a situation where the conduct of the behaviour at the centre of a case can have both criminal and civil consequences.

They often ask me why someone (the accused) can be acquitted of a crime, but sued successfully in a subsequent civil action?

I often use driving offences as a means of making a point. Many drivers who are charged with dangerous driving often experience immediate relief when they are acquitted of criminal charges; this sense of relief can be short lived when they are informed that the victim intends to proceed with a personal injury action (which has a very realistic chance of success).

The simple reason for the above situation is the difference in the burden of proof in each trial: the higher burden of proof in a criminal trial and a lower burden of proof in the civil claim.

It’s also important to appreciate that the criminal and civil legal systems operate independently of one another. They have different functions:

Primarily, criminal law seeks to punish offenders who behave in dangerous and irresponsible ways which would threaten the safety and security of the wider community and public.

On the other hand, civil law (concerning the breakdown of relations between private individuals) essentially seeks to provide the victim of a breach of duty with a remedy – usually, but not always, compensation or damages.

There have been examples of successful civil claims for damages by a rape victim (most notably DC v (First) DG and (Second) DR [2017] CSOH 5).

Crucially, the Police had investigated the incident and no further action was taken against her alleged attackers (footballers David Goodwillie and his then team mate, David Robertson) in that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service did not take the case to a criminal trial. That was not the end of the matter: Denise Clair, the victim, pursued a civil action against both men at the Court of Session and won substantial damages in respect of her injuries.

A link to the judgement can be found below:

https://scotcourts.gov.uk/media/t3bbpnhy/2017csoh5-dc-against-first-dg-and-second-dr.pdf

Recently, there have been a number of similar cases where the failure of criminal cases to secure convictions for rape have been no barrier to victims of sexual assault from pursuing civil damages claims in the Scottish courts.

Links to two of these stories reported by the BBC can be found below:

Woman wins £80,000 in damages from man cleared of raping her in St Andrews

Soldier cleared of rape ordered to pay £100,000 in civil case

Developments in the Denise Clair/David Goodwillie & David Robertson Case

On 23 February 2025, BBC Scotland reported that Denise Clair had been awarded Legal Aid to make an application to the High Court of Justiciary to be permitted to pursue a private criminal prosecution against David Goodwillie.

Now, private prosecutions in Scotland are incredibly rare with the last partially successful action going back to the 1980s. The most famous, partially successful private prosecution in Scotland became known popularly as the Glasgow Rape Case. In 1982, a rape victim was permitted to raise a private prosecution against three of her alleged assailants (see X v Sweeney (1982) JC 70). Prior to this legal action, there had been one, other private prosecution in Scotland during the 20th Century and that had been concluded as far back as 1911 (the actual Bill of Criminal Letters was granted in 1909 – see J & P Coats Ltd v Brown 1909 6 Adam 19).

It remains to be seen whether Ms Clair will be permitted by the High Court of Justiciary to go down the route of a private prosecution against Goodwillie and Robertson.

A link to the BBC Scotland report about Ms Clair’s application for a private prosecution can be found below:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2rnynwpneo

Conclusion

There different standards of proof depending on whether the legal action is a criminal prosecution or civil claim.

There is a higher standard of proof required in a criminal prosecution to secure a conviction.

The two legal systems have different objectives and operate independently of one another.

As we have seen in a number of cases, an accused who is acquitted in a criminal trial may experience a very unpleasant shock when the victim communicates an intention to pursue a civil claim for damages – which, in the longer term, may have every chance of success.

It should be emphasised, of course, that those successfully sued for conduct such as rape or sexual assault, but successfully acquitted of all criminal charges, will not have a criminal record. They will bear civil responsibility for the victim’s injuries. It’s by no means a perfect solution (given the lower conviction rates for rape), but does provide victims with some means of legal redress.