Acid Attack

by Russell Findlay

  Well-meaning MSPs tried to fix the problem in 2008 by creating the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission (SLCC), but the unintended consequence was an even more complex process with the new body dealing with ‘service’ issues while the Law Society maintains a grip on misconduct.

  If gangsters are society’s playground bullies, their lawyers are sometimes the sniggering sidekicks, happy to do the dirty work, if the price is right. I have written about many with convictions such as smuggling drugs into prison on behalf of George ‘Goofy’ Docherty, hiding a stash of guns for the McGovern gang, multimillion-pound money-laundering and other paper exercises vital for the smooth running of Crime Inc.

  Stories about solicitors who have committed other misdeeds are even more abundant. There was the conveyancer who embezzled £1 million from a bank but didn’t get his collar felt and was allowed to keep every penny. An Aberdeenshire lawyer had adulterous sex in his office with a domestic violence victim client, yet the SSDT ruled his identity should stay secret to spare his sensitivities. We can only hope he does not drop his briefs when the next troubled client enters his office.

  Keith Armstrong, a partner of blue-chip Dundas & Wilson, stole secret files from his girlfriend who worked for a rival top firm, then ‘fraudulently and deceitfully’ used them to bid for a £500,000 public sector contract.

  Another evergreen source of scandal is legal aid, which began as a noble ideal in the 1960s but has mutated into a £150-million state subsidy for lawyers and a free ATM for gangsters’ legal fees. The annual legal aid bill is around 50 per cent more than the entire budget of the Crown Office and, since the 2008 banking crash, has relieved taxpayers of over £1 billion. Many solicitors’ legal aid lust has been exposed. Kilmarnock court lawyer Niels Lockhart raked in £600,000 of ‘excessive and unnecessary’ claims, only to receive a slap on the wrist, and Glasgow solicitor Steven Anderson was able to claim £560,330 in a single year.

  Still nothing is done about taxpayers paying the bills of wealthy criminals like Barry Hughes and Michael Voudouri. Mr and Mrs Hughes racked up a £176,000 legal aid bill before their £50,000 Dubai holiday, while VAT fraudster Voudouri stole millions from taxpayers who then met his £769,000 bill. Placard-waving legal aid briefs have actually staged public demos demanding ever more loot. Their poverty pleas are as genuine as the stories they have to mouth for criminal clients.

  If politicians were sincere about universal access to justice, they would scrap legal aid and replace it with a network of public defenders. The genuinely impoverished would get representation while legal aid bottom-feeders – ripped from the teat of public subsidy – would learn to live on market rates, just like the rest of us.

  One of the problems about working as a journalist is daily exposure to lawyers. Every news story is subjected to legal scrutiny, and I experienced occasions where lawyers were pressured through back channels to soften or even spike damaging tales about their brethren, cronies or clients.

  Some newspaper lawyers came to enjoy and abuse the power and influence of being a man on the inside. Paul McBride QC topped up his generous income with shifts at the Daily Record, Sunday Mail and then The Scottish Sun – but certainly not for modest payments. McBride’s reputation as a Mr Fixit extended beyond the Crown. Using mostly charm but occasionally menace, he could also pull strings with the press. At the Sunday Mail I wrote a story about a businessman friend of gangster Jamie ‘The Iceman’ Stevenson. When McBride came in, he already knew about my story and came straight over to demand a printed copy, something he had never done before. With his feet on the desk, he took a red pen through the mention of the businessman’s child abuse conviction. I had been tipped off that he might try something like this. McBride initially tried to claim it was because the conviction was ‘spent’, but when I pointed out that that argument was groundless, he deployed persuasion to get his way. He suggested that we could come to an understanding where the conviction would be deleted and, in exchange, I would be given other stories. Absolutely no way, I replied.

  McBride then tried to play down the seriousness of the conviction. He admitted knowing this because he had defended the businessman in the abuse case! This glaring conflict of interest should have forced him to back off, but McBride was bombproof, legal royalty, pals with the big bosses, had friends in high places and was used to getting his own way.

  Unable to stay silent, I made my feelings clear in an email to my editor. I wrote:

  McBride made various attempts to justify this censorship because the ‘spent’ conviction laws do not apply.

  Given that his legal reason was bogus, McBride attempted to distort the facts and began a charm offensive. McBride said that the conviction was not serious and that —— was only a child at the time. I pointed out that —— plead guilty to committing the abuse between the ages of 12 and 15. McBride then suggested that what —— did was standard ‘behind the bike sheds’ behaviour. This is offensive and wrong.

  —— admitted abusing three children (two girls and a boy) over a two-year period. One female victim was seven when it started. The eldest was 10. They were all in care.

  For good measure, I pointed out that before McBride’s meddling, the most cautious lawyer on our payroll had already okayed the story and that the conviction featured in a book written by a Sunday Mail colleague.

  I added, ‘We’re well used to corrupt legal advice and old pals’ acts, but Saturday’s experience plumbed new depths. It is harder exposing these people when contacts have no faith in the paper’s ability to tell a simple truth.’

  I did not receive a reply. The seething editor’s only issue was why I had contaminated his inbox with this hazardous email. This was the last occasion I received ‘advice’ from McBride, who died in Pakistan five weeks later.

  19

  THE UNTOUCHABLES

  Ever since William Beck was convicted of robbery 36 years ago, he has waged a passionate and dogged campaign to prove his innocence.

  He was 20 when the police arrested him for alleged assault in Whitburn, West Lothian. At the police station he was identified as one of two axe-wielding men responsible for another crime – the robbery of a Post Office van in nearby Livingston. It was impossible, he remonstrated, as he was at home in Glasgow on that day. The CID men, having heard it all before, told Beck to save it for the judge. The judge, Lord Dunpark, jailed him for six years.

  The police and Crown Office case stank. Two witnesses, including an off-duty police officer, identified Beck as the robbery driver. However, a note made by Beck’s lawyer on the day of his identification said the officer did so ‘without even looking down the parade’. There were other holes and inconsistencies surrounding the credibility of ID evidence and information withheld from the defence. While prisons are full of those shouting about their innocence, few keep doing so after almost four decades.

  When he finally won a right to appeal, he did not get justice – not even close. When his day at the appeal court arrived in 2006, he was crestfallen when three judges rejected his argument against an earlier decision not to allow a time extension. It was not until seven years later that he made a stupefying discovery. One of the three judges that day in 2006 had been Lord Johnston – who was the son of Lord Dunpark, the judge who had put him in prison. Even worse, the judge in charge of the 2006 hearing was Lord Osborne, aka Kenneth Osborne. He had been the Crown’s advocate depute who prosecuted Beck in 1982. The only thing more shocking would have been if the third judge had been hiding a past career as a 1980s CID officer in West Lothian but he, at least, had no known links to the original trial.

  Beck explained all of this to me, saying, ‘There are supposedly rules in place to ensure judges don’t get involved in cases where they have some kind of conflict. It’s clear to me that he should have declared his connection and stepped aside.’ I raised a quizzical eyebrow and wondered whether Beck’s claims could be true. He was spot on.

  After putting it to Lord Osborne, the only survivor of the trio, he
told me, ‘You’ll appreciate that an advocate depute prosecutes a great many cases and I have no recollection of this one. If it had been drawn to my attention that I had any involvement as a prosecutor, I would have recused myself but I had no recollection of it.’

  Beck attempted to raise his concerns about the two judges. Down came the legal shutters on this noisy nuisance from Glasgow. It was bad enough that he had been denied legal aid throughout the process. One wonders where the placard-waving legal aid guardians and their universal justice ethos were when they were needed.

  When Beck finally returned to court to raise the unfairness of what had gone before, the judge only responded to his legal aid gripe but did not address the issue of judicial conflict tainting the process. Beck went on to tell a Holyrood committee, ‘How can they ignore it completely, I hear everyone ask? Simply because they can. This proves that not only did two judges sit on my appeal when they ought not to have done so, but there has been a concerted attempt from the judiciary to cover this up since.’

  Beck – still determined to clear his name – may agree with journalist and author Rod Liddle who, in his book Selfish, Whining Monkeys, writes:

  Should we kill all the lawyers, do you suppose? There are still some people around who disagree with this notion, considering it ‘too extreme’ and ‘an overreaction’ and ‘illegal’. Of course this last objection somewhat loses its force if we killed all the judges, too – and indeed it is probably the judges with whom I would start, if I had to organise the whole thing.

  Liddle, while clearly joking, may have a point. History tells us how Scotland’s judges accrued great power and wealth without the burden of accountability or transparency. A self-styled judicial ‘aristocracy’ bloomed following the 1707 Act of Union which shut down Scotland’s parliament and created a power vacuum in Edinburgh. The judges, led by the Lord President, staged a land-grab to occupy the politicians’ vacant Parliament House and became the voice of authority in Scotland as she was ruled from London for three centuries. The vast majority of senior judges are still old, white men. It was not until 1996 that a woman joined their club.

  No one could sensibly argue against an independent judiciary as a vital bulwark against meddling politicians, but small reforms take centuries and are opposed at every turn with shrieks of ‘judicial independence’. Over the years I have written about judges who have committed benefit fraud, had sex with prostitutes, inflicted domestic violence and driven while drunk. There is a long roll call of sheriffs whose arrogant conduct on the bench is amusing and staggering in equal measure. They are the scowling tyrants who wield dictatorial power in ‘their’ courts, issue bizarre and erratic pronouncements, glory in prejudice, treat decent people with antipathy and demonstrate ignorance of the laws they are supposed to administer.

  It is telling that more effective than any politician or journalist has been legal blogger Peter Cherbi – smeared following the Les Cumming stabbing (see p. 138) – whose reasoned arguments led to a public register of judicial recusals. Cherbi’s campaign for a register of interests causes judges to splutter with indignation, but its simple and persuasive logic has won backing from cross-party MSPs, law academics, the media and civil servants who oversee judicial complaints. The previous Lord President, Lord Gill, twice snubbed a Holyrood invitation to discuss Cherbi’s proposal. He cited the Scotland Act, which protects judges from being forced to explain their courtroom decisions but does not exempt them from discussing how the judiciary operates. Gill’s decision to then give a speech about judicial ethics in Qatar, a financier of global Islamist terror groups, where human rights are virtually non-existent, was viewed by some as contempt.

  The power in the hands of Scotland’s judges is amplified by their aggressive opposition to transparency and curled-lip contempt for accountability. Courteous conduct, effective discipline, open and fair appointments, common sense, and consistency in sentencing and declaring hidden financial and business interests still seem a long way off. The judiciary seems to think it is still the 18th century.

  The core values of secrecy and an aloof disdain towards the hoi polloi also permeate the other branch of the legal elite, the Crown Office, led by the Lord Advocate – currently James Wolffe QC who, one day, is most likely also to become a judge. The Crown’s main task is pretty simple – put suspects on trial, fairly and in a timely fashion, and prove their guilt. This should be done in the interest of the public, not that of the legal profession. Behind a thin veneer of competence, Scotland’s prosecuting authority is borderline dysfunctional – in a perpetual state of chaos, pinballing from one disaster to the next and more interested in spinning tall tales to the public than serving it.

  In 1996 12-year-old John Rogers was murdered in Lanarkshire. His alleged killer confessed on tape to police, but the evidence was inadmissible because of his mental state. The Crown proceeded regardless, the case collapsed and the suspect walked free. Two decades of suffering later, John’s mother, Linda McConville, told me, ‘The Crown should have seen the legal problem and should have held back because of it. It seems to be a case of “Thank you very much for your son’s life but you can go home now” – even though they messed the case up.’ Despite her anguish, no meaningful explanation or apology was ever proffered. The show moved on and she was left behind with her treasured photos.

  Another scandal I investigated involved nine police officers being hospitalised during a Wild West-style pub riot in Glasgow on the day of an Old Firm match. Two suspects – a Glasgow gangster and his son – walked free after four years of churn culminated with the discovery of fatally botched paperwork. One of the female police victims, whose neck was almost snapped and who resigned in disgust, said to me, ‘I saw straightforward cases being flung out, with a red pen being put through them by the Crown.’

  Another farce I reported was the prosecution of nine alleged members of the Daniel mob who faced 25 charges. There were 750 items of evidence, 270 witnesses and nine sets of lawyers – solicitors and senior counsel for each suspect – who raked in handsome sums of legal aid. Yet, at the latest possible moment, the Crown announced a deal which resulted in one suspect admitting a single charge of drug-dealing. The rest walked out, all innocent, to the despair of police officers. The judge, Lord Turnbull, a former Crown prosecutor, said, ‘Some observers may wonder why it is in the public interest to bring these proceedings for them to be then comprehensively abandoned today.’

  The culture of delays or churn is not just a defence ruse – it is often caused by Crown inefficiency. Sit in a sheriff court any day and, like toppling dominoes, case after case is put off, adjourned, declared not ready or kicked into the long grass. In some jurisdictions, the issue of plea deals are up front and visible. While it may be unpalatable to allow a suspect to admit some charges in exchange for others being dropped or softened, it saves court time and money, and spares witnesses the ordeal of testifying. In Scotland, this controversial tactic was sneaked in through the back door. Details of such deals are never publicised and it is up to the press to decipher whenever grubby agreements have been reached in this shadow process. This is made more difficult because court-based press agencies, part of the apparatus and reliant upon it, rarely report such deals or, if they do, couch them in flowery euphemisms. With no public or political debate, Crown prosecutors also quietly accept the use of ‘supergrass’ witnesses to secure convictions. As with plea deals, these cases can be just as repugnant, with public ignorance seemingly a matter of policy.

  One unsettling investigation I conducted in 2010 featured a plea deal and supergrass cocktail. Heroin dealer Gary Edmonds admitted luring murder victim Paul Boland to a rendezvous with his killer in Clydebank. Edmonds, who also watched the murder take place and helped dispose of the killer’s bloodstained BMW, was charged over his involvement. He then later agreed to turn grass in exchange for his charges to be dropped. In another tawdry twist, the killer, John Mullen, then struck a side deal with the Crown, admitting guilt in exchange fo
r a murder charge against his own son being binned. It wasn’t justice being seen to be done – it was a secretive carve-up.

  All these cases and countless others prompt the usual howls from MSPs demanding an explanation. Presumably MSPs’ letters are filed in the recycling bin because no proper justification is ever forthcoming. Whenever politicians, the press or public seek answers in relation to the latest Crown fiasco, they hear the white noise of ‘after full and careful consideration of the facts and circumstances . . . blah, blah, blah’.

  Perhaps after less than two decades in existence, Holyrood still lacks the maturity and confidence to realise that its members are in charge, on behalf of us, the public. While MSPs remain neutered or awestruck by the law, the Crown and judiciary will never prioritise the rights of victims and witnesses, embrace transparency, explain why cases are dropped and when deals are done, end churn and, frankly, explain when things go wrong.

  20

  DANGER: OLD FIRM

  Which of the two incidents was more absurd? Was it the Loyalist terrorist and multiple killer Michael Stone fixing me with his best death-stare and growling, ‘You look like a Catholic?’ or perhaps an Alsatian dog called Souness baring his white fangs and emitting a deep growl for my daring to ask for his ‘Celtic paw’?

  Stone was jailed for 638 years in 1988 for attacking an IRA funeral in Belfast using hand grenades and pistols, killing three mourners and wounding scores more. He was one of hundreds of terrorists released due to the Good Friday Agreement. Just months later, in November 2000, he visited Glasgow to attend an Old Firm match. Realising that we had got wind of his stay at the city’s Hilton Hotel and were lurking in the lobby, he called an impromptu press conference which he interspersed with snide speculation about my religion, his face feet away from mine. I didn’t respond to Stone’s menace.