Martin Hannan: Truth will out after Sheridan

Published on Monday 27 December 2010 11:34

So a permatanned leftie Weegie blowhard failed politician with a wayward libido and a massive ego is going to jail for telling porkies in court. So who cares?

Every citizen in Edinburgh and the Lothians should care, that's who.

For the case of Her Majesty's Advocate versus Tommy Sheridan has implications for every person living in this area.

I'll show you why shortly, but firstly a few observations. The case is far from over, as Sheridan will appeal – expect the words "not proven" to feature.

For his sake, Sheridan's appeal must be conducted by people who know what they are doing. In a first for Scotland, the trial was documented on the internet by a blogger called "James Doleman" who risked contempt of court proceedings – he allowed too many prejudiced comments on the website – by giving a comprehensive and accurate account of the testimony of every witness, as well as the statements by the judge, prosecutor Alex Prentice QC, and Sheridan himself.

With newspapers by necessity unable to convey every word of the trial, the blog thankfully showed up what many people suspected after Sheridan sacked his counsel, Maggie Scott QC, early in the trial, having earlier dismissed Scotland's best defender, Donald Findlay QC.

Prosecution witness after witness was there for the taking, but Sheridan just wasn't a good enough lawyer for himself. He was so concerned with painting the big picture of the mother, father and grandparents of all conspiracies that he forgot that in a perjury case you must destroy the veracity of the witnesses against you.

Simply calling people a liar doesn't make them so, but a Scott or a Findlay would have filleted the often dodgy accounts in the witness box, and not try to convince the jury about conspiracy theories.

For Sheridan and anyone who believes that News International got together with the procurator fiscal and Lothian and Borders Police to frame him simply doesn't understand that the police and press have, at the best of times, an uneasy working relationship.

I have some misgivings about the conduct of certain officers in this case, particularly towards Gail Sheridan, but the idea of them taking orders from any newspaper is just laughable.

Sheridan also made great play of the fact that the Crown produced no expert witness to prove that it was his voice on the crucial videotape. He thought this was a major point in his favour, but all that bluster did was to beg the question why Sheridan himself did not hire an expert to prove that it wasn't him on the tape.

Having won the defamation case against News International after sacking his legal team, Sheridan's ego would not let him see that a criminal trial is a whole different process. He blew the chance to beat the Crown because his agenda was to prove conspiracy, while prosecutor Prentice confined himself to proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Sheridan told lies. Which is the rationale for dropping the charges against Mrs Sheridan – there was a real doubt about proving the case against her, and that might have tipped the whole prosecution in the defence's favour, so better to let her walk free and ensure that her husband's criminality was the only matter to be discussed.

Criminal he is. Not only is Sheridan a perjurer, a cheat, and a fraudster – he tried to defraud 200,000 from News International – he has also undone the left-wing parties of Scotland and his own previous reputation, genuinely earned, as a doughty champion of working people against the poll tax and other iniquities.

His tragedy, our problem. And here's why we should all be concerned about the Sheridan case.

The perjury inquiry started because Lord Turnbull quite rightly pointed out at the Court of Session during and after the defamation case that wholesale perjury must have been committed. The learned judge was proven spectacularly correct by the criminal trial, but I fear he has created a rod for all our backs. For having set a sort of precedent, what is to stop further Court of Session or High Court judges from saying the same thing? Indeed, it could be argued that the learned judges now have a duty to report perjury when they suspect it. And given the amount of sheer lies told in Edinburgh's courts each day, perjury investigations might become a permanent feature of life around here.

Of course, it doesn't need to be a judge that makes the complaint. Before the Sheridan case, if a member of the public had dropped into his local police station and said "so-and-so perjured himself" in court the complaint would have been filed in the shredder. As we all know, the public and judges have the same rights under law, don't they? So presumably anyone suspecting perjury can now report it to the police or fiscal's office and millions of pounds and thousands of hours will have to be expended by Lothians and Borders' finest in pursuit of the alleged perjurer.

That is the true and most worrying implication of the Sheridan case – that the perjury floodgates have been opened, and since Edinburgh is at the centre of Scotland's legal system, it will be local people who will bear the cost while other, perhaps more worrying crimes, are not investigated.