QCs warn Scots justice in crisis

SCOTLAND'S most senior lawyers have issued a blistering warning that confidence in the country's criminal justice system is in danger of draining away following the Shirley McKie fingerprint scandal.

The 600-year-old Faculty of Advocates, which represents Scotland's QCs, said there was now a crisis of confidence in forensic experts, with the impression that their work was "unprofessional", "unreasonable" and "unacceptable".

The Faculty is demanding ministers agree to a full public inquiry into the matter, to root out bad practice and restore confidence in the courts.

The comments, the first the full Faculty has made since the McKie affair began, will provoke fresh concern over dozens of convictions in Scotland where fingerprint evidence has been used to send people to jail.

Last week, a report by a Scottish Parliament committee concluded there remained "significant weaknesses" in the way fingerprints were assessed. Now, the QCs say they fear many convictions based on fingerprint evidence may be unsafe and are warning the affair will trigger a deluge of appeals.

The latest turn of events comes a full 10 years after McKie, a former Strathclyde police officer, was wrongly accused of having visited a murder scene in 1997 after a print found near the body was mistakenly identified as hers.

She was subsequently charged for committing perjury after denying in court that the print was hers. Last year, after being acquitted, she was awarded £750,000 in damages by ministers who conceded there had been an "honest mistake". The affair snowballed after a secret report by police chiefs concluded there had been a "criminal cover-up" to frame McKie in the case.

MSPs said last week it was not appropriate for them to pass judgment on any criminality involved. However, the report has opened fresh concern about the general levels of competence within the service.

The Faculty of Advocates' comments were made to the Justice 1 Committee but were only published for the first time last week.

On the McKie case, vice-dean Valerie Stacey QC declares: "The issue is that some evidence and circumstances suggest that this is not a dispute between experts on whether or not a print matches, but rather suggests that the work of the SCRO [Scottish Criminal Records Office] is not only unprofessional but unreasonable or unacceptable."

She adds: "In this context, the Faculty is very concerned at the risk of a lack of confidence in expert evidence of fingerprint identification, forensic evidence generally and indeed the criminal justice system as a whole. It is our view that in order to restore confidence and move on from these events a public inquiry is necessary."

The Faculty is scathing of evidence from SCRO officers during the parliamentary inquiry, when it was admitted that experts would not tell outsiders when there had been a dispute among them about a print. Instead, defence counsels have been told to accept prints as 100% bona fide.

Stacey concludes: "Without a full inquiry into these events, then defence challenges are now likely to be made or attempted [into fingerprint evidence] as a matter of course."

Maggie Scott, former chair of the Faculty of Advocates Criminal Bar Association added: "They will have great difficulty in getting convictions on fingerprint evidence now because of the awareness in the public that it isn't a science."

Campaigners said the claims by the Faculty showed the case had far greater implications over and above the details of the McKie case. Her father, Iain McKie, said: "In our case, there were two wrong fingerprints. We are asked to believe that there were no other mistakes in any other case apart from that.

"I think we should be reviewing every fingerprint case over the last 20 to 30 years."

Former SNP MSP Mike Russell, who has campaigned on behalf of the McKie family, added: "It strains credulity to suggest that this is a single case. None of the issues from the Shirley McKie case have been cleared up. The truth is that politicians, prosecutors and police are scared and afraid of decisions being questioned."

But ministers have defended their stance, saying checks were made on the SCRO to find whether there was a systematic failure. The inquiries concluded that all other identifications the SCRO had processed in the year before the McKie case were correct. They also point out that there have been only two cases in the past 10 years where a case has had to be dropped by the Crown because of unsafe fingerprint evidence.

The fresh row comes as it emerged the four fingerprint experts at the centre of the affair may be due for a lucrative severance payment next month. Hugh Macpherson, Fiona McBride, Anthony McKenna and Charles Stewart originally identified McKie in 1997, and defended their case in front of MSPs last year.

Union representatives say negotiations are under way for a severance deal between them and the newly-formed Scottish Police Services Authority, which takes over the fingerprint service on April 1.

A Unison spokeswoman said: "It is impossible for anybody to understand the stress they have been under."

She added: "We will support them if they don't leave. If they do leave, it will be through their own choice."

Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson said she would give "careful consideration" to the committee's findings.

"In doing so, I want to re-state my clear commitment to ensuring that the Scottish Fingerprint Service provides a world-class service," she added.