Though the plots are often complex, they are never confusing such is William's deftness of touch. The books, which are stand alone or can be read in series, have been well received by many fellow professionals, on both sides of the Bar, due to their accuracy in law and procedure and Robbie's frank, if sardonic, view on the idiosyncrasies of the Scots criminal justice system. William is married with four sons. Are You an Author? Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biog.
Showing 14 Results Books: Only 13 left in stock - order soon. Volume 1 Best Defence 1 Jan Read this and over 1 million books with Kindle Unlimited. Only 14 left in stock - order soon. Only 4 left in stock - order soon. Volume 2 Best Defence 18 Feb Alex Munro's Whisky Tour: Borrow for free from your Kindle device. Only 8 left in stock - order soon. Killer Contract Best Defence 18 Feb One Last Second Chance: The Quest for the Heather Ale 15 Jan No matter, my next project will be a series of legal thrillers set in the Royal Burgh of Linlithgow, mine and Kenny's hometown, quaint, historic and with its very own Sheriff Court.
Or it did have until the Scottish Government closed it. And the police station too. Stubbornly, I soldier on. The Justice Secretary has done his worst, think I, dipping digital nib into virtual ink, ready to spin my next tale in which the hero-lawyer goes in search of the missing evidence required to corroborate Seriously, Kenny; tear-up the marriage vows, shut the cop shops and move Linlithgow Sheriff Court closer to the criminals, but discard a cornerstone of Scotland's criminal justice system?
A centuries old institution that twenty-three out of twenty-four Macers said their Judges preferred? The only thing that atheist David Hume and God agreed on! Corroboration is an obstacle to justice. Corroboration is as Scottish as deep-fried heroin. That's how the English do it, is not a sound argument for SNP policy. I mean, the English also do Morris dancing. But the main reason for keeping corroboration is not because it's Scottish or even to save me thinking up a new story; it's because, though it has been diluted over the years, corroboration is still a valuable safeguard to wrongful conviction.
And, yes, I know, lots of other countries don't have it. That's why lots of other countries have lots of innocent people banged-up. And what a lot of other countries don't have is what the late Jock Thomson Q. Defence lawyers are often asked, 'how can you defend someone you think is guilty? The truth doesn't always come out in the wash, and the masters of the facts don't always get it right. Juries are populated by people who either don't want to be there or, even worse, do, and there are Sheriffs and JPs on our benches who seem to think the presumption of innocence is a malicious rumour put about by defence agents.
A corroborated case isn't perfect, and it is an obstacle - but an obstacle to injustice. With a box-set of zero-tolerance and zero-corroboration - no one is safe. Doesn't it mean more prosecutions, more business for my day job? So what if I have to think up a new plot for a book? I'm not the only crime writer affected by changing laws. Take poor old Raymond Chandler. In a single chapter of the Big Sleep, P.
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Philip Marlowe carries a firearm, drink-drives, smokes in a bar, uses racist language, backhands a hysterical dame - and he's supposed to be the good guy! The baddy, on the other hand, is some bloke who, under today's laws, is selling perfectly legal pornography. And, you know, the more I think back to that tackle in , the more I feel a twinge in my leg and wonder: Wasn't it a tad reckless? An assault to my severe injury? I don't suppose anyone else who was on the pitch that day will remember what happened.
Not after all those years.
In a recent radio phone-in on the subject of the late Jimmy Savile, a caller berated criminal defence lawyers who, he said, "ran up huge legal aid fees, defending sex offenders who are obviously guilty. Child abuse, sexual or otherwise, is a terrible crime; it's best to make that much absolutely clear from the outset; however, in the ever-widening field of historic sex-crime allegations, care needs to be taken. It is not unusual to see an indictment libel an age-old offence, said to have been committed over a time-frame of months or even years. Not easy, thirty or so years later, for the wrongly-accused to come up with an alibi that covers such an unspecific period without leaving a gap of a few minutes during which, as the Crown will claim, the crime could have been committed.
At the end of I dealt with a case in which my client, a man in his seventies, was alleged to have molested two seven year-old girls, now women in their forties, by luring them into his house on the promise of cakes. There, it was alleged, he had picked them up, held them in his arms and indecently assaulted them. Thirty-five years later the women had reported the matter to the police and provided statements claiming that the two incidents had taken place sometime during the summer of His passport had more stamps than Michael Palin's. He didn't move into the house that was the locus of the alleged offences until he returned to the UK in End of that particular line of enquiry you might think.
The police reinterviewed the complainers, fresh statements were taken and the two women simultaneously remembered that the incidents had not actually take place in , but, rather, Now you may think that if a witness remembers being sexually abused, where it happened and who the abuser was, they might also remember if they were in primary three or in second year of higher education at the time. I know the old switcheroo caused eyebrows to be raised by those prosecuting locally, but theirs was not to reason why, theirs was to do what Crown Office policy dictates — a sex-crime complainer never lies.
With no independent witnesses, no DNA or other forensic evidence available, the trial was a test of credibility and reliability; a beauty contest. An elderly man against two women in their prime. For my client, old, infirm, thick glasses and the proud owner of a dodgy raincoat, it was hard not to look like a pervert. Notice how the newspaper photos of Jimmy Savile show him old and, therefore, at his creepiest-looking. For those who judge by appearances, in the credibility stakes an elderly-accused is a goal down before an evidential ball is kicked.
Fortunately, the jurors were not impressed by the complainers, perhaps due to their change of tack, perhaps because enticing children into a house on the promise of homebaking, lifting them bodily off the ground and then fiddling around with them was an M. But what if my client had not so foreign a working career?
There would have been no about-turn on the statements and, most likely, a conviction. After all, why would the witnesses make it up? Were they mentally unstable? Had they been abused by someone else when aged seven, made an honest but potentially terrible mistake as to the perpetrator and then had to lie to try and convict the wrong person?
Did they care who was convicted so long as someone paid for their suffering? Were they after CICA compensation? And as for the caller to the radio phone-in, all I can say is that if one day he finds himself wrongly-accused of a crime, it will be interesting to see if he takes the view that he is "obviously guilty. But James was harmless.
Sharp Practice
So he developed an M. From there it was just a matter of introducing brick to plate glass and seeing how much of the window display he could swallow before the police came along and huckled him. Next day at court the local Sheriffs would know exactly what to do and, several weeks later, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, a fresh-faced, fresh-livered James would emerge from Bar-L to flutter off in search of nectar — okay, Special Brew.
I met James a number of times over the years while acting as duty agent. Haddows had closed and there were an awful lot of shuttered windows about. Sadly, the Lord called last orders on James some time ago, which is a pity because the Government's plans to remove the need for corroboration in criminal cases would have been right up his street. Soon all James mark II will have to do is locate a broken window or a spot of vandalism about the town and claim it as his own work. And oldie but a goodie and an example of why things need to be viewed in context.
Continuing down that line and we were going to end up with Zen-masters in court for clapping one hand too loudly or causing disturbances by felling trees in deserted forests. It may only be a sandbag against the flood of laws against free speech, but at least we can all feel free to have our say, no matter how outrageous, in the company of like-minded individuals, without fear of an imaginary, reasonable-person taking the hump. That was quick, and no need for amended legislation. Step in the Court of Appeal and a five bench decision August It's officially a crime to alarm and distress people who would be alarmed and distressed if they were there - even if they aren't.
It seems to come earlier every year. Top of the legal aid earnings list this year is Adams Whyte. Never mind how many offices they have, people they employ or cases they conduct - one million pounds - that is a lot of money. If you're a fire chief it's half your pension-pot. It's even less once you start paying the staff, the rent, the rates, the heat and lighting and the professional indemnity insurance.
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Why don't we see headlines announcing that the rate of pay for advice and assistance in criminal legal aid cases has not increased in over twenty years? Here are some headline figures for you: Try getting your G. How about some headlines about the public-funding of doctors? Better keep them sweet. People don't see lawyers that way. Legal aid is for defending criminals. Prosecutions, unlike ill-health, happen to other people; not to them.
Criminal lawyers act for people who think like that every day of their working lives; people stunned and shocked to discover they may lose their livelihood or liberty and who, having seen the screaming headlines about Fat Cat Lawyers, expect a no-expense-spared Rolls Royce service. Problem is, just like governments like to win wars, even other people's, they also like to win in court, and criminal lawyers are a nuisance when the State seeks to 'improve conviction rates' or introduce more types of criminal offence. The first people put to the wall by any totalitarian regime are the lawyers who seek to oppose it.
We all know what happened to Hans Litten when he challenged Hitler. That is what is happening in Scotland. No firing squads, but the insidious genocide of a profession.
Sharp Practice - Willie Mcintyre - Google Книги
Just like our NHS is the envy of other nations, so, once, was our legal system, but the fact is that if we really want an effective criminal justice system, one that strives to ensure that no innocent person suffers, we have to pay for it, and in our adversarial system that means adequately funding the defence as well as the prosecution. And those who have concerns about paying taxes to 'defend criminals', rest-assured; whatever the State is prepared to pay to defend its citizens, it will always pay a whole lot more to try and convict them.
I was reminded again just how much of a one rule for some, one rule for others country we live in when listening to Radio 4 following the Nigella Lawson trial, oops, I mean the trial of her two assistants. Geoffrey Robertson QC was on, advocating that when persons such as Ms Lawson were called as witnesses they should be allowed legal counsel to represent their interests in court while they give evidence.
It's always the same when a toff gets in trouble, isn't it? Suddenly the establishment starts noticing flaws in the criminal justice system. Remember Ernest Saunders, the former CEO of Guinness, the only man to be cured of Alzheimer's, but not before the 'disease' led to his release from prison after 10 months of a five year sentence for insider trading? Ernie, who was rolling in dosh, applied for legal aid, but when his big city lawyers saw how low the hourly rate was, they complained that he couldn't get a fair trial and the LA rates were increased just for him.
Imagine if it hadn't been Big Nigella from Chelsea but Wee Nancy fae Falkirk who'd been in the witness box admitting to the use of class A drugs. Would the Prime Minister publicly state that he was on Team Nancy or would the UK's top Human Rights barrister come on the Today programme calling for a change in the law? No sooner had Wee Nancy given her evidence than the drug squad would be forming all sorts of reasonable suspicions, shortly before piling through her front door at five in the morning, hunting for tick-lists and leaving with any mobile phones they could find.
Her buroo money would be lifted too, just in case it was proceeds of crime, and, even if Nancy wasn't on Job Seekers Allowance which is approximately ten pounds less a week than the TV cookery goddess's kids get per day in pocket money , she soon would be once her employers found out she took drugs.
No book deals or cookery programmes for her. Just a shove in the direction of the nearest DWP office and her benefits sanctioned for twenty six weeks because she'd been sacked for misconduct. I'm sure it wasn't a pleasant experience for Nigella to be cross-examined on her past substance abuse, but I have an idea that for Wee Nancy the drug squad might have a few more awkward questions, which, with social workers waiting in the wings to take the weans into care, I suspect she'd be heavily encouraged to answer. Personally, I sit on the fence when it comes to the decriminalisation of drugs.
On one hand, having dealt with plenty of them in my professional life, I can't think of any drug-user who, with hindsight, believes it was such a great idea. Robust legal measures to prevent ruined lives seem sensible, and yet, notwithstanding all the public funds spent on drug enforcement, it seems anyone stupid enough to want to take them does so anyway. So while the law remains as it is, and the possession of class A drugs is prohibited, my one piece of advice to anyone who doesn't want to have their reputation tarnished, or be, as Ms Lawson put it, 'maliciously vilified' by having to admit to this illegal practice, is - don't take 'em.
Drag the man out of the house, give him a right good tanking, shove a service revolver in his mouth and suggest he mends his ways. Sort of puts a community pay-back order in the shade, doesn't it? Except, not many of the domestic cases that come before the courts involve pretty housewives whose brute of a husband has been slapping them around because they forgot to put ketchup on the table.
A great many centre around couples who, often after too much to drink, have had a high-volume slanging match. And yet, the Scottish Government's zero-tolerance policy, deals with even the most minor household disagreement as a major incident. While every year tens of thousands of 'proper' crimes: I'm a defence lawyer. Commercially, I'd be mad not to encourage more prosecutions, and, yet, where is the public interest in locking up a husband and wife on Christmas Eve, separating them from their child, just so that three days later the Sheriff can admonish him for shouting at her and grant the wife an absolute discharge for giving her husband a push?
That was Christmas ruined for one small boy and for a pair of tax-paying, first offenders, their eyes opened to the pettiness of the Scottish criminal justice system. It's also one example from around eighteen similar cases at Falkirk Sheriff Court on 27th December, no doubt repeated across Scotland. Meantime, two of my clients with over fifty previous convictions between them, who were arrested on Christmas Eve on much more serious, but non-zero-tolerance, offences that made the headlines, were liberated on a police bail undertaking. Now, I've dealt with plenty of accused, men and woman, newsflash: However, wouldn't it be better to clamp down on plain-old-fashioned-everday violence too?
Why send the message that it's okay to punch a stranger? Punch some bloke in the street and expect a warning letter or fixed fine: The problem is that zero-tolerance policies are not compatible with the exercise of reasonable discretion, which in turn is why every household barney must now be categorised as domestic abuse and why police station cells are too full to house real criminals. How about big government butting out for a while and returning discretion to police officers and local prosecutors?
They're intelligent grown-ups, hey, some of them may know better how to do their jobs than the MSP. Some may even have partners of their own and have experience of domestic spats, how they tend to cool down just as fast as they heat up. Maybe these trained professionals can be trusted to recognise the bad from the the mad from the sad. When it comes to men and women, one Christmas Eve unassembled Lego kit can be the difference between domestic bliss and a domestic abyss, a night in by yersels or a night in the cells.
You can try and stamp-out domestic abuse, but you'll never eradicate family rows. Which is why we don't need a heavy-handed justice system that treats every family drama as a criminal crisis. What we need are trained, sensible people who can view a situation, assess what's happened and distinguish those who need to be locked up from those who should kiss and make up. We have those people already. Let them do their jobs. I arrived at court the other morning to be met by an elderly woman in the foyer looking lost and confused.
Failing memory comes with age, someone once said, I can't remember who, and it brings me onto the subject of corn-on-the-cob. In fact, so fond am I of those golden kernels of goodness, smothered in melting butter, steady, that last year I cast-off a lifetime of horticulture-avoidance to try and grow a crop of my own. After all, some seeds, a few grow-bags, how hard could it be? Very, as it turned out. Now I am of the school that says a man should never buy a house that has a garden too big for his wife to cope with; however, the incumbent Mrs McIntyre was having none of it, and the job of chopping down the forest of unproductive, unsightly and highly-tangled vegetation was left entirely to me.
Fortunately, I have, over the years, accrued a host of tools and implements from various relatives who are probably still wondering what happened to them. The one I chose for the job of pruning my maize plantation was a lock-knife with a double-blade that could both cut and saw. Whatever, it made short work of the woody-stalks and after twenty minutes hard labour, the brown wheely-bin was full and I was off in search of Saturday morning breakfast.
Transporting a knife from A to B e. What if I was stopped and searched? The police did a lot of that: The knife would be found and I, as a zero-tolerance case, would have a weekend in the cells and a Sheriff and Jury trial to look forward to. Walking briskly, running was way too suspicious I made my way home, shades of the prison house beginning to close. And then I thought: For although the Lord Advocate has introduced a zero-tolerance policy for those found with knives, at least the intervention of the Cabinet Minister for Justice thwarted Labour's plan to impose a six month minimum mandatory prison sentence.
A measure only narrowly avoided by a vote against. I understand the need to clamp down on knife crime, but why are some politicians so keen on zero-tolerance policies and mandatory sentences? What's wrong with allowing Procurators Fiscal, Sheriffs and Judges to distinguish blade-wielding thugs out looking for blood from forgetful, reluctant-gardeners who just want a bacon roll?
The combination of zero-tolerance policies and mandatory sentences is the criminal justice equivalent of haud-it and dod-it. If the only tool you give the judiciary is a hammer, then every one the local prosecutor is forced by Crown Office to put in the dock is a nail that must be soundly bashed, no matter the mitigation. No matter, thanks to Mr MacAskill, as I write these words, safe at home, my dabs long wiped from the knife in quo, shower-time no longer holds the same fear for me.
With my gardening experience I must be an excellent candidate for unpaid community work. I can even bring my own equipment. If I can remember what I did with it. I like women, in fact I married one, and because she is outnumbered five to one in the gender stakes, I ensure equality reigns within the McIntyre household by occasionally relinquishing proprietary rights to the remote and watching movies in which for a change it is the women who are really smart and the men who are stupid; most of which cinema, I can't help but think, could be improved by the introduction of some Aliens, a few explosions or a really-good car chase.
One such film, Sliding Doors, came to mind when I was advising a client charged with assault. Sliding Doors, as some will know, follows, in parallel universes, the different routes the life of Gwyneth Paltrow's character takes depending on whether or not she makes a certain decision. What brought the film to mind was that my client had a decision to make: Those not overly familiar with criminal defence might be thinking, why not just ask him if he is guilty and if he says, 'yes I am,' then plead guilty?
And that's presumably what Parliament had in mind too when introducing s. A case which sparked a series of arithmetical decisions, most of which are in my TBR pile, but I understand are along the lines of: There are times when an early plea of guilty, as a sign of contrition or to prevent a child witness testifying, may be regarded as mitigation, and that was always so, long before section or Mr DuPlooy; however there is a problem.
What if an accused doesn't know if he's guilty? What if his lawyer doesn't know either? In the sentencing-discount stakes he's at a distinct disadvantage compared to his bang-to-rights brethren. My client was a chef. On Christmas Day his wife told him to come straight home after work as her sister and partner were coming for dinner and the meal would be postponed until later in the day so that they could all dine together.
Which would have all been fine had not drinks and nibbles been laid on for the staff at the hotel where my client worked. He stayed behind for a while, just to be sociable, returning home to find that the Queen was already writing next year's speech, his wife and guests gnawing at table-legs and the Christmas turkey drying-out faster than a jaikey with no giro. To make matters worse, my chap then stated he wasn't actually all that hungry.
Retreating to the livingroom, slightly ahead of a of a hail of Christmas crockery, my client was joined by his sister-in-law's partner, a man who, judging by the way he later filled the witness box, wasn't used to being kept waiting at meal times. They argued and my client ended up on the floor with one very large, angry man sitting astride him playing punch-the-face. It was at this stage in proceedings that the alleged offence was committed.
My client reached out a hand, found a long-stemmed wine glass, jabbed it into the top of his attacker's head, dragged it down his face and for good measure stabbed the stem into his chest, just above the collarbone. They say that in war it's the victors who write history; however, in fights it's the victor who gets prosecuted, and this was no split-points decision.
My client was left with two black-eyes, but his opponent was left with more stitches than the Bayeaux tapestry and the doctors were left amazed at how the stem of the glass hadn't severed any major blood vessels. As a means of defence, my client's actions had certainly been highly effective, but did they meet the legal requirements for self-defence or had the force used amounted to cruel excess? Was he guilty or not guilty? As Harry Hill would say, 'there's only one way to find out. His subsequent acquittal after trial meant that, in hindsight, my client had made the correct decision to plead not guilty.
But let's go back to that sliding doors moment when he was in my office weighing up his options, and when, as his lawyer, I'd been duty bound to advise him of the worst case scenario and the benefits of an early plea. Let's look at each:. In the worst case universe he goes to trial, is found guilty of an assault to severe injury, permanent disfigurement and endangerment of life.
He is sentenced to the maximum five years imprisonment. With remission of one-third on periods of four years or more he ends up doing three years four months. In the parallel universe he pleads guilty. The same Sheriff who would have imposed a five year sentence, gives a one-third discount for the early plea. Sixty months becomes forty and one-half remission turns that into one year eight months. Faced with that advice, who could have blamed him from entering a guilty plea?
Guilt or innocence; it's not always cut and dried. For all sorts of reasons, sometimes justice requires a judge or jury to decide which it is after a proper test of the evidence.