ACCUSED.SCOT
Articles
Source-led analysis of Scottish criminal justice procedure, FOI findings, and evidential rules.
When Justice Can Be Engineered
Editorial Reflection A published playbook now exists for reputational destruction.The question is not whether we like it.The question is whether our system is vulnerable to it. Anyone who…
Daly & Keir in Action: Has Anything Really Changed?
28.02.2026 A recent High Court appeal has returned to an issue first argued in an earlier appeal: whether defence evidence about the dynamics of a sexual relationship was…
Recorded Sexual Crime in Scotland: Why Numbers Aren’t Proof
Scottish Legal News reports a sharp 10% spike in recorded sexual crime for the year ending December 2025. The numbers moved from 14,539 to 16,029. Across the board,…
Domestic Abuse Suicide Reviews in Scotland: What They Are and Why They Matter
The Sunday Post has highlighted a deeply painful reality: some victims of domestic abuse go on to take their own lives. The story of Adrienne McCartney is devastating.…
Section 275 Rewritten: What the 2026 Bench Book Reveals After UKSC 38
22.02.2026 Scotland’s criminal courts have quietly rewritten the guidance judges use when deciding what defence evidence a jury is allowed to hear in sexual offence trials. That rewrite…
When Justice Becomes Politically Convenient: Daly, Keir and the Lord Advocate
For years, organisations raising concerns about wrongful convictions and the operation of evidential restrictions have written to MSPs. They raised questions about Sections 274 and 275, the so-called…
When Property Vanishes, So Does Trust
Why Scotland needs clear notification, logging, and tracking for prison property A prisoner’s property can look small from the outside. A paperback. A cup. Photos. Phone numbers. A…
Scotland’s Legal Aid Crisis and the Collapse of the Defence
In Scotland, the prosecution grows stronger as the defence is quietly priced out of existence. In the High Court in Edinburgh, a pillar of Scottish justice is being…
The Gender of Justice: When Narrative Shapes the Verdict in Scotland
Why a victim-centred system must pair empathy with evidential neutrality in Scotland’s justice debate. Introduction: A Tragedy, and a Question The Sunday Post's recent front page featured a…
Scotland’s PRICE Interview Model, Moorov and the Risk of Narrative Consolidation
Why structured interviewing without independent evaluation raises serious questions in multi-complainer cases A Structured Model That Has Never Been Tested Scotland trains its officers to use a structured…
When Access to Justice Stops at the Prison Gate
Published: 10 February 2026 In the final weeks before dissolution of the Scottish Parliament, correspondence was sent to MSPs and committee offices raising a narrow but significant problem…
Moorov, Historic Allegations, and the Missing Accountability in Scotland
Historic prosecutions are now routine. Allegations reaching back years, sometimes decades, are increasingly relied upon to bring people before the courts. The justification is familiar: time passed does…