Scottish Criminal Record Office

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The Scottish Criminal Record Office (SCRO) was established in 1960 with a mission statement “To manage information for the Scottish Police Service, wider Criminal Justice Community and the public to assist in the prevention and detection of crime and enhance public safety." [1] The organisation is based at Pacific Quay in Glasgow, under current Director John McLean.

The high-profile Shirley McKie case has embroiled the SCRO in controversy surrounding its provision of fingerprint identification and verification services. This controversy lead to the separation in 2001 of these services from local control by each of the eight Scottish police forces (Central Scotland Police; Dumfries & Galloway Constabulary; Fife Constabulary; Grampian Police; Lothian & Borders Police; Northern Constabulary; Strathclyde Police; and, Tayside Police) and to the establishment of the Scottish Fingerprint Service.

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[edit] Fingerprint controversy

In January 1997 an expert from the SCRO identified the left thumb print of DC Shirley McKie, a murder squad detective with Strathclyde Police, as coming from the bathroom door frame inside the house in Kilmarnock of murder victim, Marion Ross. Three other SCRO experts confirmed this thumb print identification but another five SCRO experts, who were asked to do so, refused. Nonetheless DC McKie, who denied ever having been inside the house, was charged with perjury. In May 1999 the Scottish High Court of Justiciary rejected the SCRO fingerprint evidence, and Shirley McKie was unanimously found not guilty of perjury.

HM Inspectors of Constabulary investigated and reported that – despite SCRO's claims – McKie's prints were never at the scene of the murder. In June 2000 the then Justice Minister, Jim Wallace, and Lord Advocate, Lord Boyd, apologised in the Scottish parliament to Shirley McKie. A former Deputy Chief Constable of Tayside Police, James Mackay QPM, and Tayside's head of CID, Detective Chief Superintendent Scott Robertson, were then appointed by the Crown Office to conduct a further investigation into the issues relating to fingerprint evidence and to report back with their findings. Mackay's interim report on August 3, 2000 suggested that SCRO fingerprint personnel had given evidence in court that was:

"so significantly distorted that without further explanation, the SCRO identification likely amounts to collective manipulation and collective collusion."

According to a Scottish Executive Justice Department internal email written by senior official, Sheena Maclaren:

"Mr W Rae, then president of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) and chairman of SCRO's executive committee, decided that given all the circumstances, all Chief Constables concluded that there was no alternative but to 'precautionary suspend' the four SCRO personnel. This was done on August 3 by the Director of SCRO." Government ministers were informed of the decision to suspend the four fingerprint experts who had wrongly identified a thumb print as PC Shirley McKie's.

Marked 'confidential', the final Mackay and Robertson report was submitted to the Crown Office in October 2000. It took more than five years for details of this report to emerge, but The Scotsman newspaper published extracts from it in February 2006. The report concluded that there was criminal conduct by SCRO employees and that there was sufficient evidence to justify criminal charges. However, the Crown Office told Mackay in September 2001 that no action was to be taken against the SCRO experts. As a result, they were reinstated and employed in the newly-created Scottish Fingerprint Service.

During a civil action in February 2003, brought by Shirley McKie against Stathclyde Police for malicious prosecution, the Lord Advocate Lord Boyd argued that expert witnesses should always be immune from prosecution – even if they gave false evidence.

[edit] SCRO links to the police

Following the McKie case, calls have been made to break the close links between SCRO and the police, especially Strathclyde Police:

  • SCRO executive committee chairman, Willie Rae, is Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police (formerly Dumfries & Galloway)
  • current SCRO director, John McLean, was Assistant Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police
  • McLean's predecessor, Harry Bell, was Detective Chief Superintendent of Strathclyde Police

The conventional wisdom is that such links need to be broken if the independence of the various bodies involved in detecting and solving crime is to be maintained. Otherwise, the police, forensic experts, the Crown Office and the Procurator Fiscal service will tend to form bonds which could be prejudicial to an accused person receiving a fair trial.

[edit] Claim and counter-claim

Supporters of Shirley McKie have established a fighting fund (with initial pledges of £50,000) to pay for a private prosecution against the six SCRO personnel whom they accuse of conspiring against her:

  • Alan Dunbar, supervisor
  • Fiona McBride, fingerprint expert
  • Anthony McKenna, fingerprint expert
  • Robert McKenzie, supervisor
  • Hugh Macpherson, fingerprint expert
  • Charles Stewart, fingerprint expert

For their part, the four SCRO fingerprint experts have approached the legal campaigning group, A Search For Justice led by former Strathclyde Police senior police officer Les Brown, in an effort to clear their names. Iain McKie, Shirley's father, accepted that the experts had a right to speak out, but insisted that a judicial inquiry into the whole affair would be the best solution. However, one of the experts, Fiona McBride, retorted:

"The McKies have shouted and shouted about how dreadful things have been for them, but our reputations have been shredded in the media and we have not been able to say anything in our defence. I approached A Search For Justice and they said they will investigate the facts. Hopefully, they will get to the truth."

[edit] Linked to Lockerbie?

The interim and final reports from Mackay and Robertson came a few months after the start of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial in which Lord Advocate Lord Boyd was leading for the prosecution. With the eyes of the world focused on the Scottish judicial system, it would have undermined the Crown's case to have the SCRO and its fingerprint experts prosecuted for covering up acts of criminality. In addition, SCRO director Harry Bell had been a central figure in the Malta part of the Investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 and had given evidence at the trial. Furthermore two American fingerprint experts, David Grieve and Pat Wertheim – who gave evidence for McKie at her perjury trial – were reportedly warned by the FBI to back off, lest they scupper the trial of the "Lockerbie bombers".

Lord Boyd has denied there was any Lockerbie link. But at Prime Minister's Questions on March 6, 2006 Tony Blair was challenged by the leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, over evidence in the previous day's Scotsman newspaper suggesting that the FBI put pressure on Scottish officials not to reopen the McKie case. Had the case been reopened, Salmond alleged, questions would have been raised over the reliability of the forensic evidence used to convict Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi. Downing Street later said that the Prime Minister would write to Mr Salmond once he had considered the new revelations.

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