Driver's Conviction by Scottish Magistrate Quashed
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ON June 16 we published a leading article entitled "Presumption of Guilt ty Court Appearance," in which we stated that the ethics of British justice appeared to have been contravened by a Scottish police judge.
The case was one in which a driver was accused by two traffic policemen of a traffic-light offence while driving a bus. Evidence for the defence was given by the accused, two passengers, and the driver of a bus which was standing near ; yet the defendant was fined, with the alternative of imprisonment.
On appeal, in the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, the Lord Justice-General, expressing the opinion that the conviction should be quashed, said that the language used by the police judge was clearly unjudicial. ".He was willing to believe that the judge was betrayed into this unfortunate language by some loss of temper in the course of the proceedings," but the conviction could not be allowed to stand when he used language which was inconsistent with his judicial office at the time. In addition, the appellant was awarded seven guineas expenses.
The statement to which we attached particular importance was that the accused would not have been brought before the court if he had not done something wrong, an assumption of guilt which is contradictory to the whole ethics of British justice.
We trust that this will be taken as a lesson by those magistrates who are inclined to penalize drivers accused of traffic offences who have the courage to defend their cases.
There is another procedure which appears to us to be wrong in principle. We refer to the system by which persons receive notices calling for the payment of sums of money in lieu of prosecution. There is an element of blackmail in this method which may lend itself to grave abuse.