Alan Hutton Beats Speeding Rap

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Many of you may have seen the recent news item about Alan Hutton. Our client had the misfortune to be stopped by two road traffic police officers as he left Glasgow one sunny afternoon in November last year.
Mr Hutton's case was widely reported as if there had been a simple admin error however winning Mr Hutton's case like many others took a great deal of research, commitment and powers of persuasion to bring to a successful conclusion.
We had spotted at least 4 significant deficiencies in the Crown case. When it came to court ex Sheriff Mr Robert McCallum was prosecuting.He is a very experienced and very able Procurator Depute. He realised immediately that the Crown had at least two difficulties with the case and he explained to me that he would move the court for an adjournment. The case had been adjourned on a previous occasion ostensibly because a police witness had failed to attend. I had opposed this as I felt the real reason, was that the Crown knew that they had failed in some of the basic preparations in the case and had decided to try to plug the holes in their case. A few weeks later it looked like my suspicions had been borne out when we received calibration certificates for the police equipment. It was clear from the documents served that they had been prepared weeks AFTER the original trial diet!
This meant we would have to re visit the case preparation and we began with the video evidence. Usually a formality as it shows the police chase however in this case it may have proved to be very important as we soon realised that the Crown had another problem. The charge was speeding in a 50mph zone however we could see from the video that some of the speed detection was into a 60mph zone. The way in which the charge was libeled would make this a very important discovery. Yet again showing that you can leave no stone unturned when it comes to preparing a case for trial.
I don't intend explaining all the other areas of concern simply because our fellow solicitors and competitors read this blog and I think that it is time they did their own homework.
I was asked after the case if this "muck up" in case preparation was all the fault of the Procurator Fiscal and had to say no. The fact is that the PF in court probably only received the case papers an hour or so before the trial was due to start. He relied upon the systems set up in the Procurator Fiscal's office to ensure the case was fully prepared however when that office is dealing with probably the biggest workload of ANY court in Europe it is hardly surprising that a mere speeding charge fails to get all the attention that it requires. I reckon to prepare one of these cases properly takes at least 10hours. I can do this because I have clients like Mr Hutton who are willing to pay me to do all that I can to win. The PF's office is equipped with terrific legal resources such a online legal databases, case management software and scanning and document processing technology but these resources can deliver a lot more for small businesses like my own.We have invested heavily in this area an in fact we have the same, if not better IT solutions at work in our office. We can make the time to check legal databases, cross reference documents and statutes and check video evidence. However can the public purse ever afford to throw that level of resources at the prosecution of a minor crime? If the answer is no, then alternatives should be considered i.e. Should penalty points ALWAYS be imposed for speeding or should it be like in Holland and some other countries where speeding is dealt with by a fixed monetary penalty? Should cases always come before a criminal court or could some cases be dealt with by a civil remedy? (Then no criminal record?) There are a lot of questions, moral,political and legal all involved in the "Speeding in Scotland" debate.