Lady Dorrian, Lord Menzies and Lord Drummond Young have rejected a request for private prosecutions against bin lorry driver Harry Clark (who killed 6 people) and Range Rover driver William Payne (who killed Laura Stewart and Mhairi Convy).
The public are understandably outraged and EVERYONE I have spoken to is agreed that Harry Clark and William Payne should never have been behind the wheel of a vehicle.
On the other side of the coin, I have been contacted by a member of the public who is diabetic and took a diabetic fit at the wheel of his car. It resulted, tragically, in a pedestrians death. He was jailed for 6 years.
He understandably wants to know why
he was prosecuted while Harry Clark and William Payne were not?
It’s a perfectly reasonable question.
The Crown office go to great lengths to try to convince the public that every case is unique and the circumstances and legalities are different in every case, ad nauseam <yawn>.
But the public know only too well that the Crown office continually peddle this old well-worn lie in order to cover up for all the inconsistencies in everything they do and protect their own backsides for the incorrect decisions they make.
The Crown office really need to wake up to the fact that you can fool some of the people some of the time...
So why is there such a disparity in the cases of the bin lorry driver, the Range Rover driver, and the diabetic driver who contacted me?
Is the law wrong?
Is the law unclear?
No, the law is not wrong. The law actually is perfectly clear when it comes to these kinds of cases.
It’s
incompetence and
corruption within the Crown office that's the problem.
It begins with
incompetence i.e. wrong decisions taken by the COPFS. The
corruption then follows quickly afterwards when Procurator Fiscals close-ranks to cover up their colleagues' incompetence.
Incompetence is rife in the COPFS.
It is also sadly inevitable because of the very structure of the COPFS.
The Crown office is run entirely by third-rate failed lawyers who could never 'cut it' in the real world of private legal practice.
It's a sad fact of life that the top lawyers in Scotland - the cream of the crop in the legal profession - are out there busy earning fortunes in private practice.
So we, the public, are left with all the 'bottom of the barrel' solicitors who no law firm wants to take the jobs in Crown office. These failures are very lucky to have a job at all in the legal world, and the relief and gratitude that the Crown office have given them a job and an opportunity to scrape a living is written all over every single one of their faces when you talk to them. Yip, Perry Mason's they ain't!
The only time the Crown office attracts what could remotely be called any
real talent is when an experienced solicitor who has made a nice few quid out in private practice decides to take the unusual step of taking a hit in salary to come work for the Crown office. Oh yeah, they will always claim they are doing it 'for the public good' but needless to say you soon discover that they are far from benevolent types and are usually eyeing up a knighthood, an OBE, or a judges job.
The the sort of 'talented' people the public could well do without.
The father of Laura Stewart - speaking out after judges rejected his request for a private prosecution - has said: “
The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service from the very start nearly six years ago have done everything in their power to protect an early incorrect decision of non-prosecution, to protect the process, to protect their own self-importance and, in doing so, rather than admit they got it wrong, protected William Payne…”.
He is absolutely correct.
Corruption and incompetence is a deadly combination if ever there was one. And they are alive and well and in abundance in the Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service.
If the Glasgow bin lorry and Range Rover cases have proved anything to the Scottish public it is that the Crown office corruptly stick like glue to incorrect decisions they have taken and refuse to budge no matter the circumstances.
They don't care if justice is denied to the public, they don't care if public opinion is entirely against them, and they don't care if the public have no confidence in them, just as long as they never have to admit they’re wrong.
And, hey, why would the Crown office ever admit they're wrong? After all, there’s no-one who can over-rule the Crown office and force them to change their wrong decisions. No one.
I know.
Because when I found myself the the victim of a false accuser, wrongly arrested by police and wrongly prosecuted by the Crown office, I took them on in a court of law...and I won. That's right, I stood up for truth, honesty, and justice and I defeated the might of the Crown office and proved their decision to prosecute me had been wrong.
The Sheriff at my trial even reprimanded the Crown office by saying “
Mr Campbell should never have been brought before a criminal court” and that "
the only abuse in this case has come from the complainer".
You can't get any more wrong than that!
So did the Crown office apologise to me when it was proved in court that that they had made an incorrect decision and had tried to prosecute the wrong person, the victim, an innocent man?
Nope.
Did the Crown office then go after my false accuser - the real criminal - and prosecute her for making false statement to police which resulted in me, an innocent member of the public, losing my liberty for 3 and a half days?
Nope.
My false accusers crimes and her abuse against me were IGNORED by the corrupt Crown office.
To this day a string of corrupt Procurator Fiscals have REFUSED to prosecute my false accuser.
Alarmingly, they have refused to even
look at any of the documentary evidence we have of her crimes, informing me they don't want to see any evidence that proves she committed a crime because they have already made a decision
not to prosecute her and will not go back on that decision no matter what. Sound familiar?
The evidence is still sitting in a file in a drawer in my house (and a copy is with my solicitors). Police and Crown office investigators were originally supposed to meet with me to look at the evidence and go over it and evaluate it but, curiously, then changed their mind.
To date, they still have not looked at one single piece of the criminal evidence in this case.
So how can this be?
Why would the Crown office NOT want to look at evidence of a crime?
Why would the Crown office NOT want to prosecute a criminal?
It's quite simple really.
You see, if the Crown office were to arrest and prosecute my
false accuser it would be an admission that their earlier decision to lead a prosecution against
me was the wrong decision. And the Crown office NEVER admit mistakes. Never.
So my criminal false accuser gets to go free rather than the Crown office have to admit they got it wrong.
In the world of the Procurator Fiscal this is considered an acceptable trade-off.
And just as Laura Stewarts father has discovered, when the Crown office make a decision and it turns out to be the wrong decision, there’s no going back. They stick like glue to the wrong decisions they make (and back each other up no matter what).
They use every resource at their disposal and invoke every privilege and power they possess to protect their earlier incorrect decision.
The result of all this?
Murderers go free.
Rapists go free.
Gangsters go free.
Drug dealers go free.
False accusers go free.
And all because the Crown office are too arrogant to say “
Oops, we may have been a wee bit hasty with that decision, so in the interests of truth, honesty, and justice, we're going to take another look at it”.
Truth, honesty, and justice is of NO importance to the motley crew at the Crown office. It never has and it never will.
Procurator Fiscals only care about covering up their incompetence and saving face. Their arrogance knows no bounds.
Procurator Fiscals consider themselves far too clever to ever make a mistake. In their elitist world they are never wrong. Never.
When they lose a case they NEVER accept that the poor member of the public they wrongly tried to prosecute was innocent. Instead you'll hear them bemoan that "he/she got away with it".
Their arrogance and their ego is breathtaking.
The Crown office have nothing but contempt for the public. Procurator Fiscals believe they are of a higher social class than you and I, are better educated than you and I, and have a higher moral authority than you and I.
Crown office employees are well known for being insufferable snobs who look down their noses at everyone they come in to contact with (if you have ever spoken to a Procurator Fiscal for any length of time you'll know that their behaviour towards members of the public they come in to contact is just as worrying and perplexing as it is hilarious)!
Despite many Procurator Fiscals coming from humble backgrounds and being born and raised in poor areas, as soon as they walk through that door of the Crown office their whole demeanour changes. The chest puffs out, the attitude changes, any sense of truth and honesty evaporates, plus they all acquire this rather strange new-found plummy Morningside accent which they never had before!
In short, they become the self-appointed guardians of all that is pure and righteous. Legends in their own head, if you will. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And it starts the minute they walk through the door of the COPFS.
The fact that these individuals were already a million miles away from ever being Scotland's best or brightest solicitors (which is why they went to work in the Crown office in the first place) means that they quickly learn to toe the line and fit in to the corrupt culture in the COPFS or they'll be out of a job.
So your average Procurator Fiscal could fairly be described, in essence, as weak, incompetent, and just grateful to have a job in the legal profession. Even the ones who do realise that things are not right at the COPFS simply do not have the substance or character to speak out.
Instead they live their lives in court rooms up and down Scotland, stuck in a bizarre little bubble, completely removed from any sense of reality.
Procurator Fiscals genuinely believe that representing the public and working for the public good would be a lot easier if those pesky members of the public - who are too stupid to understand the ins and outs of the legal system anyway - would just leave them alone to get on with it.
Lockerbie, Emma Caldwell, Hollie Gregg, William Payne and Harry Clark, the scandalous list of Crown office failings goes on and on and on.
And guess what? The COPFS really don’t care. They stick two fingers up to the public. Likewise, they stick their ignorant and incompetent noses in the air and continue with business as usual, safe in the knowledge that there’s absolutely nothing you and I, the public, can do about their corruption and incompetence. Nothing.
As my local MSP told me, “
if an MSP commits a crime the Crown office must be able to prosecute that politician without fear or favour, therefore MSP’s must not be allowed to interfere with the decisions of the Crown office”.
In other words, the Crown office are above the law, above Parliament, and above the public they are supposed to represent.
And my God don't they know it.