Capital Offence

Chapter 7

Jamie’s team had always believed that there was a fallback position if the vote went the wrong way. The law might give you the power to execute people but you didn’t have to use that power. After all, for years it had been a capital offence to commit treason, long after the death penalty had been repealed for other crimes. The State and the Judiciary simply chose not to use the full power of the law.

That had been the plan in this case.

But present circumstances made this tricky in practice. The public vote on the death penalty had been cast in the immediate aftermath of the Cassidy killings. It could almost be seen as a verdict which the people of Scotland had handed down in that specific case. Any government which chose to interpret things differently might be signing its own death warrant.

Ultimately the decision was Jamie’s. After the judicial process was complete, a condemned man could still appeal to the Head of State for clemency. And in this new republican age, that meant the Prime Minister.

Even before the trial got underway Jamie went to visit George Leonard in the City Hospital. The old man had been unconscious since the attack, and there was fear that he was in a coma which might be permanent. He had been stabbed several times and one of his lungs had collapsed, but the knife had missed his heart. He survived an operation to repair the immediate damage. However he had received a blow to his head which had caused unknown damage. There was reassuring evidence of brain activity, but no telling when or indeed if he might regain consciousness. Clearly, if he survived, his contribution to the investigation would be vital.  But the court couldn’t afford to wait indefinitely.

The case began, in front of a jury.

Systematically, the facts were put on record. The accused man was an unemployed drifter called Stuart Pearson. The facts about his past were patchy. But the events of that night were patently clear to all.

But despite that, this sick shit who’d stabbed George and slaughtered the Cassidys refused to admit his guilt, consistently lying while on oath. Even his defence lawyers seemed to despair. He had been caught literally red-handed, yet to explain what he was doing in the house he continued to spin ludicrous yarns which were immediately shown up as lies by the forensic evidence. His lawyers considered pleading insanity, but somehow this wasn’t convincing. The man was a proven liar, there were clearly things he was not prepared to discuss at all, and there didn’t seem to be any medical reason for his vagueness. Evil perhaps. But he just didn’t come across as deranged.

The case was headline news for weeks, with the press baying for blood, and just about screwing up any chance of a fair trial by prejudging the matter in appalling detail before explaining why a lethal injection was too good for the animal who’d been arrested. Hardly consistent with their stance before the referendum, but their job was to sell papers, not preach universal truths.

One police photograph was published by a tabloid screaming about public interest. It showed a man beaten beyond recognition. The eyes were swollen shut and the rest of the face was bloated and distorted, with dark purple bruising. It reminded many readers of the photo of Jon Peters, the downed pilot captured and tortured in Iraq during the first Gulf War. In Peters’ case it was barely possible to match it to the pictures of the handsome boyish face which the man had once possessed. In the months which followed his release his appearance was restored, but for a long time he seemed to wear a different set of expressions, like a new wardrobe of clothes.

The paper which published Pearson’s picture was immediately fined substantially. Scottish courts are far stricter than those in England on conduct which would prejudice a fair trial, particularly when identification is an issue. The same photo circulated on the internet, but from then on the only new images were artist’s impressions of the court scene.