Wings Over Scotland

There is a not particularly funny joke that is sometimes told in legal circles about why a law student failed to finish his coursework – because he had no conviction. With rare exceptions lawyers aren’t renowned for their sense of humour but I can’t help thinking someone, at the highest levels of our justice system, is having a right laugh at my expense and those who have loyally supported me over the past six years.

I’m talking about the Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC – a sitting member of the Scottish Government’s cabinet who was nominated by Nicola Sturgeon to that post in 2021, five months after I was acquitted.

For those unfamiliar with my case, I offer this brief summary. In March 2020 I made a short video on my mobile phone that was two minutes and thirty eight seconds in length. I hadn’t planned to make the video when I went out for a walk in a field near my home. But I was annoyed and wanted to articulate that annoyance, although at the time I recorded it I wasn’t intending for it to go much further.

Later that night, just before turning in, I uploaded it to my YouTube channel on a closed, unlisted link and then posted that link to my Twitter account that, at the time, had a modest 1000 or so followers. I then forgot about it.

Little did I know that short mobile phone video would result in me facing initially a criminal trial, then a five year legal battle in the highest civil court in Scotland and now, most likely, an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

In that very short video, I expressed my disdain for the complainers and conspirators, male and female, who were still trying to destroy the reputation of Alex Salmond, despite the fact he had been fully acquitted at the High Court just a few days before I made that video.

So what did I say? What possible criminal offence could I have uttered in less than three minutes that would result in the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, then led by Ms Bain’s predecessor James Wolffe, despatching five Edinburgh detectives to raid my home, confiscate all of my tech and then bring me to trial where I potentially faced a year’s imprisonment if found guilty.

The video simply highlighted my opinion that if the complainers continued with their efforts against the former First Minister, ignoring the judgement of the High Court that had acquitted Alex, and they persisted in this campaign behind a veil of anonymity, then eventually, one way or another their identities would become widely known.

In evidence produced at the High Court the complainers themselves made plain that they could undertake this politically motivated campaign by exploiting the legal protections that rightly exist to protect actual victims of sexual assault. Their cynical and stated exploitation of this important protection not only continued to damage Alex’s reputation but also undermined wider confidence in those actual victims of such assault whose identities to deserve to be protected from the wider public.

That aspect is one of the more egregious and nefarious undertaken by the complainers and those who coordinated them in what has become the Alex Salmond saga.

As Sheriff Patterson concluded at Jedburgh Sheriff Court, “I do not accept [the comments made in the video] would cause a reasonable person fear and alarm. The video contained an opinion, nothing more.” He accepted my defence team’s motion of “no case to answer” and the prosecution case was dismissed and I was fully acquitted.

But such is the lunacy of Scotland’s once-revered independent legal system that my only hope of a subsequent remedy for this wrongful prosecution would have come if I had been jailed in January 2021. Only then would I have a legal route to seek compensation.

As Fergus Ewing MSP, former Scottish Government Cabinet Secretary and Minister noted in Holyrood just last week (see from 17.08), that situation is plainly “absurd”.

After my acquittal I instructed Solicitor Advocate Gordon Dangerfield – easily the most tenacious and dogged lawyer I have ever come across – and Andrew Smith KC to act on my behalf and in May 2025 we finally secured two full days of legal debate with the aim, on our side, of moving to the “proof stage”. That would potentially have enabled “certain facts”, as Alex Salmond put it following his acquittal, to see the light of day.

After these hearings we waited for Lord Lake’s considered written judgement, which was finally published on 5th February 2026. It is 31 pages in length and narrates, for the most part, all the legal issues around my case in some considerable detail before coming to a conclusion on whether I could proceed to the proof stage and what would have been the “juicy parts”.

Myself and my legal team were confident we could prove that there was clear malicious intent behind the decision to prosecute me in 2021. However, as Lord Lake makes plain in his conclusions, my case cannot proceed because of legislation passed by the UK Parliament.

The Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, section 170 provides that prosecutors are immune from liability for malicious prosecution in summary proceedings like mine, where the person suing was not imprisoned.

In his written submissions to the court, my solicitor advocate posed these questions about that provision: “On what rational basis is a prosecutor liable for malicious prosecution only if imprisonment has been imposed on the person suing? … Is it compatible with Article 6 for there to be no remedy for a person seeking to sue and caught by the terms of section 170?”

Our answers to those questions had already been given almost four years earlier in our letter before action to the Lord Advocate, lodged as a production with the court. Section 170 was, we said, “incompatible with Article 6 of the European Convention in that it fails to provide a remedy when a wrong is committed”.

Lord Lake has now agreed. In a formal declaration in his judgment he has found section 170 to be “inconsistent with the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Article 6 (right to a fair hearing), as it is an unjustifiable restriction on a pursuer’s right to have a determination of the merits of his claim that he was the subject of a malicious prosecution”.

That is an incredible statement in its own right, but Lord Lake continued: “Nothing has been brought to my attention to indicate why, notwithstanding the submission of no case to answer being upheld, it could be said that there was a case fit to try. It therefore appears that in the circumstances, the decision of the sheriff to sustain a submission of no case to answer indicates that there was no objective reasonable and probable cause [for bringing a prosecution].”

He then conducted his own analysis of the evidence and concluded: “Whether on the basis of the view taken by the sheriff at the trial or an examination of the evidence available in relation to the requirements of section 38 [the statutory breach of the peace provision under which I was prosecuted], viewed objectively there was no reasonable and probable cause to commence the prosecution – no case fit to be put before a court.”

In other words, Lord Lake is saying that if it was not malice that lay behind the decision to prosecute me, then what was it? In effect, he is laying out the basis of my claim and that it has clear merit. Indeed, he concludes in terms that “the requirements for a case of malicious prosecution against the Lord Advocate … are admitted, established, or the subject of relevant averments” in my pleadings before the court, and that I should be able to go to proof on them.

However, my claim cannot continue because the law stands at present is inconsistent with ECHR and my rights to a fair trial.

Now you might think that conclusion would have been a welcome one for our Lord Advocate because it effectively brings an end to my legal claim against her.

But on Monday 16th February 2026 the Lord Advocate took the decision to appeal Lord Lake’s decision to the Inner House of the Court of Session, the highest civil law court in Scotland. It is a fair assumption that the Lord Advocate is not best pleased by the ruling, not least because it leaves the door wide open for us to proceed with an application to the European Court of Human Rights.

Given Lord Lake’s very strong judgement substantively in my favour, albeit having been forced to dismiss my claim, we are confident of getting a very sympathetic hearing in Europe.

However, one consequence (intended or otherwise is hard to say) of this decision is that we now face unexpected additional court costs.

From the start, it has been clear that the Crown Office, led by the Lord Advocate, has sought to grind us down and price me out of this important legal case. Through the sheer generosity of my supporters in both my initial criminal trial and later in this civil case, we have kept up the fight.

Some have argued that it might have been easier for me to have simply walked away after my acquittal in 2021. They have misjudged me.

For simply offering an opinion in a 158-second video that initially hardly anyone viewed, I had my home raided, my mobile and laptop taken and all of my digital fingerprint forensically scrutinised in what was evidently a fishing expedition. Even after this, so weak was their case they had to amend my initial charge and hope they could jail me under a catch-all breach of the peace.

The publicity, generated by the complainers who didn’t even wait for the initial police report to be actioned, was relentless and highly critical of me personally, causing huge reputational damage that ultimately saw me lose contracts amounting to tens of thousands of pounds. As so often in modern Scotland the process was the punishment, but if they had succeeded I would also have been in prison for a year, for uttering a short opinion on legal proceedings that had been concluded and were of huge public interest.

Senior Counsel for the Lord Advocate during his pleadings at last May’s Court Of Session hearings before Lord Lake made no effort to hide the real agenda; to send a chilling effect across all those who had criticised the complainers.

This is not how actual justice systems are meant to function or how a state prosecutor should be conducting public affairs. Their actions are, as many within the criminal justice system have already noted, brought the entire system into disrepute, but still they continue.

This week I have reluctantly relaunched my financial appeal to get us over this next hurdle. We are genuinely optimistic about our chances but we cannot do that without support.

It has already become a landmark and historic case but we need one big final push. Hopefully then, the joke and the last laugh will be on Scotland’s malicious state prosecutor.