The Alex Salmond trial

Lothian said:
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
Click to expand...


"His own admission of inappropriate behaviour." Do you think there's a man breathing who has reached the age of sixty who could put his hand on his heart and say he had never done anything that might possibly be inappropriate?

Salmond was trying to be conciliatory, trying not to appear arrogant and insensitive and unrepentant. He probably did start to consider that his touchy-feely manner might have made some women uncomfortable, in retrospect, when at the time he thought he was only being avuncular. I think you're reading too much into all that.

If you're following this case at all, you surely can't have failed to notice the huge signs pointing to the conspiracy.
 
Rolfe said:
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?
Click to expand...


*sigh*

The reason why so many rape trials result in acquittals has little or nothing to do with whether or not the court believes the alleged victim to be lying (or exaggerating about what happened, or even honestly misremembering what happened).

The reason why....... is that in order to convict in a criminal trial, the guilt of the accused must be proven beyond all reasonable doubt.

And in almost all "he said / she said" types of case, this means that the court has to be effectively 100% certain that a) what "she said" was empirically, factually true, and b) what "he said" was empirically, factually false, before it votes to convict.

It's entirely possible - and indeed it's precisely the case in very, very many rape trials of this variety - for a court to believe the alleged victim, but to conclude that there's simply not sufficient evidence to make the court certain of the defendant's guilt BARD, and that therefore there is no other option open to the court but to acquit.

(I hope, at least, that you don't hold the belief that acquittals in "he said / she said" rape trials convey even the tiniest amount of implication that the alleged victim must have been lying or otherwise mistaken...)


Now apply this to the Salmond acquittals.
 
There's also the extremely salient matter of courts having the extra burden of deciding what (assuming there has been no specific genital contact) constitutes the criminal offence of sexual assault.

Obviously in a rape trial, it centres upon a specific act. And as far as the act itself goes, it's pretty much a binary issue of "it happened" or "it didn't happen", with no grey area.

On the other hand, when a court has to make a determination on a sexual assault charge, it has the additional job (on top of trying to determine what happened) of trying to determine whether what happened constituted sexual assault.

Example:

Man A approaches Woman B (a work subordinate) in a quiet corridor at a social function. A put his hands round B, hugs her, and kisses her on the cheek.

Scenario 1: A's hands are only loosely round B's upper waist; A hugs B for only a fraction of a second; A plants what might be described as "a very quick peck on the cheek" to B.

Scenario 2: A's hands contact B's waist but immediately slide down to the top part of her buttocks; A pulls his body tight up against B's, with particular pressure coming from his groin, and holds that pressure for 3 or 4 seconds; A places an open-mouthed kiss of about 2 second's duration onto an area just to the side of B's lips.


I'd argue that Scenario 1 is - though very possibly improper and out of order - by no means a criminal offence. However, Scenario 2 most certainly does take us into the area of sexual assault. So how about a scenario which falls somewhere in-between 1 and 2? And how can a court come to the BARD certainty (a requirement for conviction, remember) that what happened is 2 (or close to 2) or not? If it can't be certain, it has to acquit.

But hey-ho.
 
Rolfe said:
"His own admission of inappropriate behaviour." Do you think there's a man breathing who has reached the age of sixty who could put his hand on his heart and say he had never done anything that might possibly be inappropriate?

Salmond was trying to be conciliatory, trying not to appear arrogant and insensitive and unrepentant. He probably did start to consider that his touchy-feely manner might have made some women uncomfortable, in retrospect, when at the time he thought he was only being avuncular. I think you're reading too much into all that.

If you're following this case at all, you surely can't have failed to notice the huge signs pointing to the conspiracy.
Click to expand...
I haven't failed to notice that you put a positive spin on everything Salmond did and a negative one on the other side. It seems that for you it is the darkest black or the whitest white. My starting point for each side is a bit greyer than yours.
 
I was able to watch a lot of today's hearing, surprised that both Sky and BBC cancelled everything to show events. I think Salmond came over very well.

I think the strongest part of his message is that a judicial review and a jury have found in his favour, so he is not on trial, the leadership of the government, COPFS and the civil service are.
 
Lothian said:
I haven't failed to notice that you put a positive spin on everything Salmond did and a negative one on the other side. It seems that for you it is the darkest black or the whitest white. My starting point for each side is a bit greyer than yours.
Click to expand...



Likewise.

But from what I've read, it seems like an awfully large proportion of people who might describe themselves as SNP activists are similarly polarised: they're either categorically on "Team Alex" or they're categorically on "Team Nicola". To me, it's a very interesting, though rather unedifying, thing to observe.
 
Nessie said:
I was able to watch a lot of today's hearing, surprised that both Sky and BBC cancelled everything to show events. I think Salmond came over very well.

I think the strongest part of his message is that a judicial review and a jury have found in his favour, so he is not on trial, the leadership of the government, COPFS and the civil service are.
Click to expand...



You shouldn't have been surprised. The 24-hours news channels LOVE things like this - it's real-time drama in a heightened, quasi-judicial atmosphere.

We saw exactly this phenomenon play out, for example, in the matter of the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the US Senate. BBC News and Sky News cleared out their schedules wholesale for most of those hearings, even though their subject matter was only of the least consequence for UK audiences. What mattered was the drama of it all, together with the delicious prospect of tales of people's sexual impropriety being mixed in with the pomp and solemnity of high office.

Just as with today's Salmond hearings.


(To wit: had the root cause of today's hearings been, for example, allegations of fraud against Salmond, I doubt very much indeed whether the two UK 24-hour news channels would have cleared their schedules for it....)
 
I cannot wait for the away leg with Nicola Sturgeon. I have cleared my schedules for that.
 
If nothing else, I am glad to have come away from reading Salmond's submission with the knowledge of a new (to me) word: timeously.

I am now going to use it every chance I get.
 
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.
Click to expand...
Roberto Conchie Harris was jailed for 8.5 years for perjury for lying in the trial of David Wayne Tamihere for the murder of two Swedish tourists in Coromandel about 1989.
He was tried and convicted about 3 years ago, after a private citizen, Mike Kalaugher prosecuted him. The police would never have gone near it because Detective John Hughes wrote the lies for Harris to tell in court to secure the false conviction.
An appeal for Tamihere is pending and worth watching, there is a thread here I will update.
 
Matthew Best said:
If nothing else, I am glad to have come away from reading Salmond's submission with the knowledge of a new (to me) word: timeously.

I am now going to use it every chance I get.
Click to expand...


Just remember to pronounce it "time-ously", and not "tim-ee-ously" (which is definitely how it reads to me!) :D
 
Don't worry - I looked it up before daring to say it out loud - which I have already done when telling my wife I needed to leave the house if I was going to get to work timeously.

She was not impressed.
 
Rolfe, you might be right or you might be wrong and there is no doubt you have the firm conviction of your beliefs. In addition, sexual harrassment is incredibly difficult to prove so many men know they can get away with a quick touch here or a sly leer there.

However, when you claim Sturgeon's husband is 'as camp as a line of tents' to insinuate she merely married him so they'd both control the hegemony of the SNP, I think you are being a bit over the top. Even if he is gay, then it doesn't mean 'wee Jimmy Cranky' only married him for the ulterior motive of being one up on Salmond. You are reading too much into things, as though there is a great conspiracy against Salmond when really it is just pure political rivalry (and quite fishy, too, with the recurrence of salmon and sturgeon as the main course).
 
It's not me that's reading that into the situation. I have no idea if it's true or not. I'm passing on what many people who are closer to the protagonists than I am are saying openly.
 
Lothian said:
I haven't failed to notice that you put a positive spin on everything Salmond did and a negative one on the other side.
Click to expand...


Things like this?
Rolfe said:
But the sheer absence of people outside the witches' coven...
Click to expand...

I don't know anything about this case apart from what is written in this thread. So there was an actual "witches' coven"? If not, why use that phrase?

...in a context where tweaking one woman's hair and leaning forward past his wife to give another woman a push in the back to hurry her up an outside staircase in rainy and windy weather were deemed to be criminally inappropriate
Click to expand...

I don't know about criminally, but IMO these actions were definitely inappropriate. My reasoning is simple - if someone did that to me I would consider it very inappropriate, possibly even assault.

Perhaps you are right and there was a conspiracy to accuse this man of things he didn't do. But the spin is tainting your argument. You would do better by just sticking to the facts.

Rolfe said:
Do you think there's a man breathing who has reached the age of sixty who could put his hand on his heart and say he had never done anything that might possibly be inappropriate?
Click to expand...
I know of one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom