The Alex Salmond trial

Lothian said:
Lying is certainly possible. However I am talking about a fundamental point and not this case in particular.

In a civil case you will get a decision handed down by the judge and that will contain the full reasoning behind the decision. That may well contain an opinion that a witness was lying although I had never seen it put that way. 'Unreliable' is more likely.

In a criminal court the jury decides. There is no published decision with reasons. All we know is whether the defendant is found innocent or guilty. We can guess at the reasons the jury found what they did but need to understand it is only the accussed who is on trial. The witnesses are not on trial.
The court only makes a decision on the accused not the witnesses.

It is therefore wrong to say that the Salmond court concluded all the witnesses for the prosecution were found by the court to be liars. The court found Salmond mostly innocent (unproven on one charge). It did not make any decisions on the witnesses. No jurer stood up and answered "Guilty" to the question " Do you find this witness guilty of lying"

Rolfe may have taken the view that witnesses lied but she is wrong to say they were found to be lying by a court, the justification for her misogynistic descriptions of them.
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It is perfectly correct to observe that the jury found in favour of the side of the case which is really only appreciable as being true by taking the view that some and indeed most of the complainants were lying in their teeth. Of course the jury did not deliver a verdict that said "and of course woman H is a vicious liar and should be done for perjury", that's not how it works. They were of course not "found to be lying by the court".

It is however not beyond the wit of woman to observe that the verdict of the jury contains the inescapable implication that they did not believe woman H and her cronies. It is also entirely legitimate to look at the actual evidence and form one's own opinion that these women are a shower of lying harpies.

And by the way, the use of a feminine-gendered insult to describe female people is not "misogyny". I think these witches are harpies. I do not extend these epithets to cover women in general.
 
Rolfe said:
It is perfectly correct to observe that the jury found in favour of the side of the case which is really only appreciable as being true by taking the view that some and indeed most of the complainants were lying in their teeth. Of course the jury did not deliver a verdict that said "and of course woman H is a vicious liar and should be done for perjury", that's not how it works. They were of course not "found to be lying by the court".

It is however not beyond the wit of woman to observe that the verdict of the jury contains the inescapable implication that they did not believe woman H and her cronies. It is also entirely legitimate to look at the actual evidence and form one's own opinion that these women are a shower of lying harpies.

And by the way, the use of a feminine-gendered insult to describe female people is not "misogyny". I think these witches are harpies. I do not extend these epithets to cover women in general.
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I was never involved in, not ever heard of anyone else I served with, investigating a perjury case.

I am not even sure how they start. Is it the Sheriff or Judge who asks for an investigation? Can a member of the public report their suspicions? Would a solicitor report a client who they know lied during a trial?

I believe that a reason why perjury happens so rarely is that it is often nipped in the bud. I have seen people sent down to the cells by a Sheriff during a trial, to reconsider what they have said. I have seen pauses in trials whilst a solicitor has a chat with a witness in private. I have seen witnesses warned whilst giving their evidence, resulting in a change to their evidence, where they admit they were not being truthful. I have seen witness evidence coming to an abrupt end as the PF or defence decides no more questions.
 
I think there is another point. Supposing someone is acquitted of a crime because a jury doesn't believe a witness who is clearly lying their head off. Supposing then that witness is charged with perjury. The Crown Office purports to be concerned about the possible effect on any witness coming forward, if there is an implied threat hanging over them that they will be prosecuted if the jury doesn't believe them. I'm not sure how real a danger that is, but I can see the force of the reservation.

But there's another aspect. Suppose that lying witness is charged and tried for perjury, and the jury in that case decides the case isn't proven beyond reasonable doubt? Where does the original, acquitted, accused stand then? Another jury has just retried his case, in effect, and declined to confirm that the witness the original jury clearly thought was lying, was indeed lying. It's a huge can of worms. Does that then mean that the original accused wasn't innocent at all, despite the original verdict?

Then we come on to cases where the accused is acquitted and the Crown declines to prosecute these witnesses for perjury. Cue wagging tongues for decades declaring "well of course he did it really, look, they didn't charge the prosecution witnesses with perjury."

Better not touch that one with a barge pole I think. I can't think of a case where a lying witness (or indeed accused) has ever been charged with perjury.
 
I remember being quite angry when the wealthy Alex Salmond launched a crowd funder to pay for his legal action regarding the Parliamentary inquiry. It is now clear he did that to stop the Scottish Govt from financially ruining him to prevent being held to account for what they did. I wish i had contributed to it.
 
So many people here deciding what they believe according to who they like and (mainly) who they don't like. They don't like Salmond? He must be a regular, drunk groper. Disapprove of countries being independent? Well obviously he's guilty!
 
Rolfe said:
So many people here deciding what they believe according to who they like and (mainly) who they don't like. They don't like Salmond? He must be a regular, drunk groper. Disapprove of countries being independent? Well obviously he's guilty!
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Well, good that I'm not falling to that trap - I totally don't like him, he has always seemed like rather a nasty person and his brand of narrow minded nationalism is absolutely not my cup of tea, but I still think that he has been treated quite unfairly.
 
Fair enough. And I suppose asking why you think wanting one's own country to be independent is something reprehensible, and indeed if there's any way for a country to achieve independence that would meet with your approval, isn't on topic for this thread. (I can't say I ever knew him well, but I did know him, and the description "rather a nasty person" is so far off the mark as to be in another space-time continuum.)
 
Rolfe said:
Fair enough. And I suppose asking why you think wanting one's own country to be independent is something reprehensible, and indeed if there's any way for a country to achieve independence that would meet with your approval, isn't on topic for this thread. (I can't say I ever knew him well, but I did know him, and the description "rather a nasty person" is so far off the mark as to be in another space-time continuum.)
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Well, I am myself a liberal minded Finnish patriot and I absolutely appreciate the Swedish influence on our history and totally support Swedish as the second national language. The rhetoric of the Scottish nationalists sounds very shrill and the sentiments very bourgeois and middle class to me. I think I prefer the traditional and rather glorious anti- or non-nationalist Scottish radicalism to this version. Tbh, Northern England, Scotland and Wales would make a great nation. The Tory Home Counties are abhorrent.
 
I think maybe you should consider whose reporting of the Scottish independence movement you've been reading, and whether these people are reporting the reality. The movement is an extremely broad church of people of all political and social persuasions, who all want independence for their country. It is in the interests of those who oppose this aim, for their own reasons, to want to portray the independence movement in a bad light, including demonising Salmond.

Northern England, Wales and Scotland are not a nation and never have been. Scotland went into a treaty-established union with England (which included Wales, as Wales hasn't been independent since the late 13th century) in 1707. Both the desire of the Scots (who recognise their own ancient, historical nationhood and its integrity) and international law require that Scotland leaves that union with its territorial boundaries intact, as it entered into the treaty.

Really, it isn't up to anybody else to redraw our borders and gift us parts of even the whole of other people's countries. I would have thought Finnish people would understand that, Karelia and all that. By the way, kudos for getting all the Finnish people out of Karelia before the Soviets took over. And doing it twice. I admire that.

But we really should stop this, it's off topic and the posts will be moved if we don't.
 
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If I could return to the subject on the card, there's a point I don't think has been sufficiently brought out.

These complaints were collected at different times. There were the two original complaints which were apparently supposed to do nothing but remain on file for possible internal SNP use if Salmond applied to be a candidate at a future election. I'm not quite sure how fast and in what order the others came in, but in essence it was only after the judicial review skewered the conspirators that the police were involved. (Even at that point things got quite murky as I gather the complaints were originally sent direct to the Crown Office as if they were gift-wrapped for charges to be brought, rather than being sent to the police to be investigated.)

The original policy as drafted included a clause saying that complaints would only be referred to the police with the consent of the complainers. But there was a lot of discussion about this and I think at some point it was decided they only had to inform the complainers.

Anyway, some if not all of the original complainers were extremely reluctant for the police to be involved. There are texts and WhatsApp messages all about trying to pressurise them to consent to the police being involved in their complaints. Thinking about it, I believe this is because they knew that the stories they had concocted, originally never having been intended to be professionally investigated, were not going to stand up to a full investigation and certainly not to the forensic examination a defence counsel was going to subject them to.

But the judicial review escalated the whole thing way beyond what was originally intended, and when they lost that the only thing they could do to salvage the situation was to involve the police. That's the thing from Lesley Evans about winning the war even though they'd lost that battle. From then on the original complainants became pawns in the game being played by Evans, Sturgeon and the rest of the cabal which includes She Who Must Not Be Named. They were forced into seeing their false accusations taken far further than they ever intended, but they were in a full-nelson because of their positions and political aspirations.

Then there was the trawl through 400 women who had worked with Salmond throughout his career to try to get someone who wasn't part of that cabal to make a complaint. That took a lot of police time, but in the end nothing transpired. In the end all the complainants were part of the Sturgeon/Evans/SWMNBN clique, and all the complaints related to a fairly narrow period of time in the late part of Salmond's career, during the independence referendum when he was under unprecedented public scrutiny and when the stakes had never been higher. He'd kept himself irreproachable during his 30s and 40s in Westminster, but suddenly in his late 50s we have this one wee group of mates who very definitely wish him ill coming out of the woodwork and themselves crafting a retrospective complaints procedure in their desperation to smear him.

But anyway, I think the original alphabetties knew very well that their complaints were likely to be exposed as fabrications and falsehoods if they ever got in front of a court, but by the time the conspirators were on the run after being forced to concede the judicial review these women were the only weapons they had and they were going to be used whether they liked it or not.
 
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Rolfe said:
I think there is another point. Supposing someone is acquitted of a crime because a jury doesn't believe a witness who is clearly lying their head off. Supposing then that witness is charged with perjury. The Crown Office purports to be concerned about the possible effect on any witness coming forward, if there is an implied threat hanging over them that they will be prosecuted if the jury doesn't believe them. I'm not sure how real a danger that is, but I can see the force of the reservation.

But there's another aspect. Suppose that lying witness is charged and tried for perjury, and the jury in that case decides the case isn't proven beyond reasonable doubt? Where does the original, acquitted, accused stand then? Another jury has just retried his case, in effect, and declined to confirm that the witness the original jury clearly thought was lying, was indeed lying. It's a huge can of worms. Does that then mean that the original accused wasn't innocent at all, despite the original verdict?

Then we come on to cases where the accused is acquitted and the Crown declines to prosecute these witnesses for perjury. Cue wagging tongues for decades declaring "well of course he did it really, look, they didn't charge the prosecution witnesses with perjury."

Better not touch that one with a barge pole I think. I can't think of a case where a lying witness (or indeed accused) has ever been charged with perjury.
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Exactly. It is entirely possible that someone is found innocent according to the criminal standard of proof and a witness for the prosecution is found innocent of perjury to that same standard.
Hence you can't, as you did, say the Salmond court concluded that the women lied.
Your opinion of the witnesses is your opinion not the court's.
 
Rolfe said:
I think there is another point. Supposing someone is acquitted of a crime because a jury doesn't believe a witness who is clearly lying their head off. Supposing then that witness is charged with perjury. The Crown Office purports to be concerned about the possible effect on any witness coming forward, if there is an implied threat hanging over them that they will be prosecuted if the jury doesn't believe them. I'm not sure how real a danger that is, but I can see the force of the reservation.

But there's another aspect. Suppose that lying witness is charged and tried for perjury, and the jury in that case decides the case isn't proven beyond reasonable doubt? Where does the original, acquitted, accused stand then? Another jury has just retried his case, in effect, and declined to confirm that the witness the original jury clearly thought was lying, was indeed lying. It's a huge can of worms. Does that then mean that the original accused wasn't innocent at all, despite the original verdict?

Then we come on to cases where the accused is acquitted and the Crown declines to prosecute these witnesses for perjury. Cue wagging tongues for decades declaring "well of course he did it really, look, they didn't charge the prosecution witnesses with perjury."

Better not touch that one with a barge pole I think. I can't think of a case where a lying witness (or indeed accused) has ever been charged with perjury.
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You're obviously not familiar with (for example) Jeffrey Archer then....

And you're all kinds of wrong about what a criminal trial does and does not adjudicate, when it comes to acquittal. An acquittal means that the guilt of the accused has not been proven to the court beyond all reasonable doubt. No more, and no less, than that. And an acquittal means that the accused must retain the full presumption of innocence. But it does not necessarily mean that the alleged victims of the accused are liars, nor that they are mistaken.
 
Rolfe said:
So many people here deciding what they believe according to who they like and (mainly) who they don't like. They don't like Salmond? He must be a regular, drunk groper. Disapprove of countries being independent? Well obviously he's guilty!
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Eh? Do you mean "here" as in ISF or as in the parliamentary select committee.

If the latter, well you don't seem to have much faith in the Scottish Parliament.

If the former, I think you might be letting emotion cloud objectivity and seeing polarisation where none exists. I, for example, am against Scottish independence - for precisely the same reason (unsurprisingly enough) why I was against Brexit. But from what I can see, Salmond is entirely in the right here*. It seems to me to be far more likely that not that Salmond, while he may have been a little too over-familiar in some of his physical interactions with women in the course of work, never went near to crossing the line into illegality - or even "conduct unbecoming". I suspect that the Sturgeon govt and senior party officials panicked (perhaps fearing that if they later stood accused of minimising anything, it might wreck the reputation of both the party and the government, and thereby seriously damage the independence movement), and that they then engaged in unlawful (and possibly illegal) behaviour to try to cover themselves.

* It's only your personal "commentary" on the case with which I take exception, not the case itself. But when Salmond starts referring to those women as liars, harpies and witches, do be sure to get back to me.
 
Rolfe said:
So many people here deciding what they believe according to who they like and (mainly) who they don't like. They don't like Salmond? He must be a regular, drunk groper. Disapprove of countries being independent? Well obviously he's guilty!
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To declare an interest I have always liked Salmond. As an MP he helped my father. I much prefer his style to Sturgeon's which comes across as more combative.

However I guess most of those who like him prefer to think that despite his affairs and his own admissions of inappropriate behaviour that this is all a conspiracy and nothing he ever did was either normally questionable or could have been handled better in any way. Then again I may just be making lazy assertions of stupidity about people who disagree with me. Seems to be the popular thing to do
 
LondonJohn said:
Eh? Do you mean "here" as in ISF or as in the parliamentary select committee.

If the latter, well you don't seem to have much faith in the Scottish Parliament.

If the former, I think you might be letting emotion cloud objectivity and seeing polarisation where none exists. I, for example, am against Scottish independence - for precisely the same reason (unsurprisingly enough) why I was against Brexit. But from what I can see, Salmond is entirely in the right here*. It seems to me to be far more likely that not that Salmond, while he may have been a little too over-familiar in some of his physical interactions with women in the course of work, never went near to crossing the line into illegality - or even "conduct unbecoming". I suspect that the Sturgeon govt and senior party officials panicked (perhaps fearing that if they later stood accused of minimising anything, it might wreck the reputation of both the party and the government, and thereby seriously damage the independence movement), and that they then engaged in unlawful (and possibly illegal) behaviour to try to cover themselves.

* It's only your personal "commentary" on the case with which I take exception, not the case itself. But when Salmond starts referring to those women as liars, harpies and witches, do be sure to get back to me.
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Pretty much matches my view.
 
LondonJohn said:
Eh? Do you mean "here" as in ISF or as in the parliamentary select committee.

If the latter, well you don't seem to have much faith in the Scottish Parliament.

If the former, I think you might be letting emotion cloud objectivity and seeing polarisation where none exists. I, for example, am against Scottish independence - for precisely the same reason (unsurprisingly enough) why I was against Brexit. But from what I can see, Salmond is entirely in the right here*. It seems to me to be far more likely that not that Salmond, while he may have been a little too over-familiar in some of his physical interactions with women in the course of work, never went near to crossing the line into illegality - or even "conduct unbecoming". I suspect that the Sturgeon govt and senior party officials panicked (perhaps fearing that if they later stood accused of minimising anything, it might wreck the reputation of both the party and the government, and thereby seriously damage the independence movement), and that they then engaged in unlawful (and possibly illegal) behaviour to try to cover themselves.

* It's only your personal "commentary" on the case with which I take exception, not the case itself. But when Salmond starts referring to those women as liars, harpies and witches, do be sure to get back to me.
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You need to look deeper. Sturgeon stopped trying to achieve independence, and started putting obstacles in its way, all the while she was telling the troops independence was close enough to touch. Salmond saw what she was up to, bitterly regretted having handed the reins over to her, and started making noises about coming back into politics.

That's when it was decided that he had to be prevented from gaining a political power base (that is a parliamentary seat) ever again, and so these complaints were solicited (starting from the resurrection and sexing-up of a single incident that actually happened but had been resolved with no hard feelings on any side) in order to block this.

Because there was no internal complaints procedure that would cover former ministers (Salmond wasn't an MP or and MSP at the time), one had to be concocted. And that was done in a biassed and illegal manner, and it all flows from that.

You can take exception to my personal views all you like. Salmond is constrained in what he can say, and ironically he's too much of a gentleman to say it even if he's thinking it. I'm under no such constraints.
 
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LondonJohn said:
You're obviously not familiar with (for example) Jeffrey Archer then....

And you're all kinds of wrong about what a criminal trial does and does not adjudicate, when it comes to acquittal. An acquittal means that the guilt of the accused has not been proven to the court beyond all reasonable doubt. No more, and no less, than that. And an acquittal means that the accused must retain the full presumption of innocence. But it does not necessarily mean that the alleged victims of the accused are liars, nor that they are mistaken.
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Oh, I forgot about Jeffrey Archer. That was fun. But it was a pretty extreme case.

You keep repeating what we all know about the meaning of a verdict. You seem entirely incapable of understanding what I'm actually saying, which is that in this particular case there is so little scope for an intermediate view that perhaps the complainer was mistaken or misinterpreted something, that you're left with two rational possibilities. Either woman H (and most of the rest of them actually) is lying, or Salmond is lying. It's perfectly legitimate to note that the possibility the jury chose is the one in which the women were lying.

I suppose you think we should bear in mind that Knox and Sollecito may very well be guilty, in the end it was only decided that it wasn't proved beyond reasonable doubt that they did it, and none of that disreputable procession of Italian liars were actually lying?
 
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