Stuart Munro

Brilliant day today at the Simons Muirhead Burton golf day at Moor Park in London. Golf wasn’t quite so great. Many thanks to @PhilSmithSMB for the invitation!

Please send CV to Stephen Smith at sgs@livbrown.co.uk by 5pm on August 22nd.

This is a great opportunity to work alongside senior solicitors in a progressive firm while also building a career. We’re an equal opportunity employer – we actively encourage applications from all backgrounds. Competitive terms, which will take into account previous experience.

Our Employment Department is looking for a new assistant solicitor, with enthusiasm, a willingness to learn, and an appetite for advocacy. NQ level to two years. Mix of claimant & respondent work, mostly private fee, with a considerable number of Tribunals.

Decision now published in a tremendously sad case against a local authority for failures in supporting a foster placement. The authority’s case collapsed when its key witness changed her position in cross-examination. scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-s…

And what about Scotland? Our Justice Secretary has said she’d prefer to adopt whatever the UK Government comes up with; yet the Lord Advocate - the Scottish Government’s legal adviser - doesn’t seem to think it’s a good idea. Yet again, victims are expected to wait.

What does the UK Government’s latest statement on mass exoneration mean for victims of the Post Office scandal? #PostOfficeScandal livbrown.co.uk/news/criminal-…

Will a grudging, caveated scheme - one which the Minister was at pains to stress would lead to guilty people being acquitted - really feel like justice?

@ProfChalmers Entirely agreed. These were often very skewed investigations, with no effort being made to trace the supposedly missing money. One can’t simply ignore the context of defective evidence being presented as robust.

Hugely significant day in London, making submissions to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. Our focus was on the experience of those wrongly convicted in Scotland, which the chair recognised as ‘very important’. #PostOfficeInquiry

In common with the new practice in the Inner House, the hearing was live-streamed - a real step toward truly open justice.

Fascinating day in the Inner House today, as the court considered whether the Crown should be vicariously liable to the victim of assault by a judicial office holder - a question yet to be determined anywhere in the common law world. scotcourts.gov.uk/the-courts/sup…

🧵 As enhanced media attention is trained on the Scots aspects of the Post Office scandal - here's a significant detail which emerged from Sir Wyn Williams' inquiry which raises significant questions for the Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service.

@TimesRadio @thetimes @KateEMcCann @StigAbell In Scotland the prosecutions were all brought by an independent public prosecutor, but we still saw people convicted.

“It's just clearly the worst mass miscarriage of justice in modern British history.” Lord Macdonald KC tells #TimesRadio that "big organisations" like Post Office should "never again be allowed to conduct prosecutions on their own behalf." @KateEMcCann | @StigAbell

And why, despite the overwhelming accumulation of evidence to show that Horizon was unsafe, did it take until 2023 for the first Scottish convictions to be overturned, years after England?

In Scotland, cases were prosecuted not by POL, but by our independent public prosecutor, the Procurator Fiscal. That should have allowed a proper overview and highlighted common concerns about the reliability of Horizon. Did it?

The Post Office Horizon scandal - why we’re still a long way from understanding what led to wrongful convictions in Scotland. #horizon livbrown.co.uk/news/criminal-…

Did our particular rule requiring corroboration - evidence from more than one source - offer any sort of safeguard to those accused?

@DavidWelshFOA @LivingstoneBrow Delighted to have you as our guest and to share in your great moment! Congratulations - richly deserved.

Well this was a lovely surprise! Thanks to @LivingstoneBrow for inviting me along to be there in person.