LORD Advocate Elish Angiolini lobbied to protect her predecessor from scrutiny in the forthcoming public inquiry into the Shirley McKie fingerprint scandal, according to government sources.
The Government will announce within weeks that it intends to press ahead with the judicial inquiry into the McKie affair, which rocked the Scottish political scene for much of last year.
Scotland on Sunday can also reveal that judges from Norther
n Ireland have already been approached to chair the planned inquiry, in the face of a determined attempt within the Crown Office to dramatically reduce its scope.
Senior Government sources have claimed that Crown Office advisers - including Angiolini - lobbied to keep former Lord Advocate Colin Boyd from being included in the inquiry.
Although a spokesman for the Government last night insisted the claims were "nonsense", the move will focus further attention on Scotland's troubled prosecution service at the end of what has been yet another controversial week for the organisation.
Last Thursday, Angiolini was accused by Lord Hamilton, the Lord Justice General, of having undermined the independence of the judiciary in the wake of the World's End trial collapse. The judge in the case, Lord Clarke, had thrown the case out, arguing there was insufficient evidence. Angiolini then told Parliament she believed there had been enough evidence to put it before a jury.
The McKie case has plagued the Crown Office for nearly a decade after the former policewoman 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 with 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".
However, the affair snowballed after Scotland on Sunday revealed a secret police report stating there had been "criminality" and a "cover-up" in the way the case had been handled.
Boyd has come under scrutiny over why, despite the police report, he decided not to charge the fingerprint experts at the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO) who made the original claims. The Crown Office insisted there was "insufficient evidence" for a prosecution.
An announcement on the inquiry - demanded by the SNP while the party was in opposition and promised before the election - has been expected for several months, but has been delayed as its exact remit is disputed.
One insider said: "There was a very strong attempt to have a remit that declared Boyd should not be considered at all. The legal establishment has fought a rearguard action."
However, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill is believed to have refused to water down the terms of the inquiry. Ministers have also decided they must recruit a judge from outside Scotland to chair it, to ensure the strictest impartiality. As with the inquiry into the decision-making surrounding the death of Surjit Singh Chhokar, when Sir Anthony Campbell, Justice of the Supreme Court of Northern Ireland was appointed, a judge from the province is in the frame to be appointed.
An inquiry has also been backed by the Faculty of Advocates, which has warned that it is required to restore confidence in the justice system.
A parliamentary inquiry was held earlier this year into the affair but failed to stifle demands for a judicial investigation which would be given access to all documentation relating to the case.
Iain McKie, Shirley's father, said: "I hope that the Government will stand firm against the people who would like to see the remit weakened to protect the legal establishment."
He added: "In the wake of the World's End fiasco, the whole system needs to be looked at. Alex Salmond last week said he supported Elish Angiolini's statement on the World's End case because it showed openness and accountability, so it would be only consistent of them to stick with the same principles in this case."
Labour MSP Ken Macintosh, who has supported the SCRO officers in the case, said he too believed the inquiry should have a wide remit.
However, he warned that the inquiry could be flawed because of the presumption that McKie was wrongly identified.
He said: "They will try to base this on the premise that the identification was wrong, and because they are therefore starting from a false premise they can't help coming to a false conclusion."
A spokeswoman for the Crown Office said the matter was "not appropriate" for it to comment upon. Of the claims that the Crown Office had tried to reduce the remit of the inquiry, a spokesman for the Government said: "This suggestion is absolute nonsense. We hope to make an announcement on the inquiry shortly."
Boyd was unavailable for comment.
The full article contains 799 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
