ACCUSED.SCOT
Articles
Source-led analysis of Scottish criminal justice procedure, FOI findings, and evidential rules.
When Procedure Becomes Punishment
A person can win their case on paper and still lose their life in practice. Not through a verdict. Not through a sentence. But through a sequence of…
Anonymity Until Conviction in Scotland: Pre-Conviction Anonymity
Scotland has rightly moved to protect the privacy of complainers. It is now time to provide the same shield for the accused until a verdict is reached, ensuring…
When Protection Becomes a Firewall
There is a reason Thomas Leonard Ross KC’s talk has struck such a nerve. It is not polemic, and it is not social media commentary. It is…
How Media Images Shape Guilt Before Trial
Follow-up to:Naming Before Proof Is Punishment — And the Press Is the ExecutionerOur earlier argument was structural: naming is punishment, and the press delivers it fast.This piece examines…
A Right Without a Remedy: The Structural Flaw in Scottish Justice
A landmark Court of Session judgment has exposed a disturbing "dead zone" in the law: a place where a citizen’s rights are officially recognised as violated, yet the…
Naming Before Proof Is Punishment
There is a quiet legal fiction in Britain that collapses the moment a sexual allegation hits the press. We pretend a man is “innocent until proven guilty.” Then…
When Allegations Appear at Parole: Scotland’s Accountability Gap
Editorial note: This article is anonymised and procedural. It makes no claim about the truth or falsity of any specific allegation. The focus is narrower, and harder: what…
When “Useful” Replaces “True”: Section 275 and Scotland’s Accountability Gap
31.01.2026 A Saturday Reflection on Section 275, institutional campaigning, and the accountability gap When the long-serving chief executive of a national campaigning organisation steps down after nearly…
The Moorov Doctrine and the Revisionist Investigation
In the modern Scottish criminal process, a person’s past can be retrospectively reinterpreted through a single inculpatory hypothesis. A decade of ordinary relationships, marked by the usual…
When Process Replaces Proof
Opinion • Scotland • Justice A Scotland justice question raised by senior lawyers — and the UK Supreme Court Executive summary The Post Office scandal exposed a system…
From Indictment to Headline: How Allegations Become Public Narrative Before Trial
The presumption of innocence doesn’t only live or die in a courtroom. It also lives or dies in the story the public is given before any evidence is…
From an Argument to an Indictment: How Historical Allegations Are Built
How repeat police contact and “risk” paperwork can manufacture events in historical allegations, and why Section 275 can stop a jury hearing what would disprove them. This is…