“The trust placed in public prosecutors is the most significant that a society can bestow. I do not carry that responsibility lightly and promise to pursue this vital public service to the utmost of my abilities.”
The words of Dorothy Bain QC as she was sworn in as Scotland’s new Lord Advocate last week were well-judged and, almost certainly, well-meant.
However, the country’s most senior prosecutor will be judged on action not words or, in the case of her predecessor, James Wolffe, inaction.
His stepping down was met with high praise as many of his learned friends hailed a lawyer of unshakeable principle and unwavering sense of justice. Which is terrific as far as it goes but that’s not terribly far if not accompanied by an unshakeable, unwavering determination to take difficult decisions and get things done.
That, even his ardent fans might agree, did not seem to be Mr Wolffe’s long suit. He may have blown the dust from the most contentious case files in his in-tray when he arrived at 25 Chambers Street five years ago but there has been little to indicate he opened them.
The lassitude and languor which has become synonymous with our Crown Office was evident long before Covid and long before Mr Wolffe was given the top job but its rusting wheels and seized gears become more intolerable with every slow year that passes, with every stalled investigation, every delayed decision, every victim told to wait and wait some more, and every family fobbed off with warm words and empty promises.
In recent months, we have been calling on the Crown Office to deliver justice for Emma Caldwell, 16 years after her murder. The initial investigation into her death was arguably Scotland’s most expensive. It was, without any argument, a howling skip fire of hubris, careerism and unforced, unforgiveable errors.
A few years after another Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland, ordered Police Scotland to reopen its inquiry after a forgotten suspect was exposed in 2015, his successor, James Wolffe, told Emma’s mother that no stone would be left unturned to win justice for her daughter. Well, how many stones are left? How many more promises can Mrs Caldwell be given? How much faith can Scotland have in our justice system if, after all these years, all the mistakes and cover-ups, there is still no justice for Emma?
These are not theoretical questions. They can, and hopefully will, be answered by our new Lord Advocate, who seems a rarity in the cloistered world of our highest courts in that no one seems to have a bad word to say about a lawyer who has, over many years and many cases, proved to be as dogged as she is diligent. She is clearly a capable woman, capable of taking difficult decisions and getting things done.
Her determination to meet Margaret Caldwell so soon after taking up her role suggests she is prepared to act and not just talk about winning her daughter justice.
That was a quick decision by the new Lord Advocate, the right decision and, it can only be hoped, the first of many in this dismal, corrosive, shameful scandal.
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