Exposing thE dElays at thE hEart of lEgal systEm

IF YOU want to see just how slow the judicial system can be, then head for Edinburgh Sheriff Court on a busy morning.

I sat in Court 4 at the sprawling court complex – and watched as case after case was called, but nothing actually happened. Forty cases called but only two resolved. The rest were a mixture of box-ticking exercises, discussions about whether witnesses were available or in 10 cases, postponements because the accused hadn’t turned up.

That’s right, one in four cases shelved because the person the police had gone to the trouble to arrest had subsequently been bailed and couldn’t be bothered to show up.

And the most shocking thing of all? No one involved – court clerks, lawyers, sheriffs – seemed remotely surprised.

Not so much business as usual, but no business at all – and all of it costing Scottish taxpayers £10 million a year in wasted court time.

Serving a population of 440,000 and with 18 court rooms, Edinburgh Sheriff Court should be a hub of action, but the truth is the opposite.

A list of who is scheduled to appear in each courtroom is published each day, so I headed to the one with the biggest number of names on the list, court four.

It was obvious right away there was going to be a lot to get through, there were crowds milling around outside as soon as I arrived.

In most Scottish sheriff courts, “business” is scheduled to start at 10am but in some of the busier ones like Edinburgh it’s 9.30am. The reality on this day was somewhere in between.

At the start of business, there were lots of solicitors buzzing around and the 36-seat gallery was practically full.

But within 20 minutes all the solicitors had cleared off and everyone but myself and a man in his 70s had left.

“Are either of you representing yourself?” the sheriff clerk asked us hopefully.

When we both shook our heads, he picked up the phone with a sigh and the air of someone who’d seen it all before.

“Hello, it’s court four here,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of business to get through and there’s no one here.” And how right he was.

TV dramas have created a perception that courtrooms are full of intrigue and drama. If only that was true.

The first case of the day saw a man in his 20s sentenced to carry out unpaid work for his part in a drunken melee. Thankfully, he’d actually showed up. The second case set the tone for the rest of the morning. It involved a woman from Fife, but she hadn’t turned up, her solicitor telling the court she didn’t have enough money for the train fare.

No one batted an eyelid and the case was kicked into touch.

The third case was an assault charge but we’re told it can’t proceed because one of the witnesses is on holiday. So the witnesses who have shown up and have missed being at work for a morning have completely wasted their time.

In the fourth case, we hear about a man in his 30s racially abusing a black bouncer.

He had previously pleaded not guilty because he was so drunk he couldn’t remember it – an excuse trotted out with such regularity that no one ever questions how ridiculous it sounds.

Like a lot of accused people, the man has had a change of heart, has decided he can remember it after all and is pleading guilty. His case is deferred for a report to decide whether he should be fined or given unpaid work.

Cases five, six, seven and eight are all called and put off in a matter of minutes.

And so it carried on. I saw court staff twiddling their thumbs while security officers tried to find people who had wandered off and a series of lawyers confirming not guilty pleas and trials dates being set.

Most of them were set for the same couple of days and, given the speed of business on show, it’s hard to see how they’d all go ahead.

The stream of people who didn’t turn up for their case told the most illuminating story.

Several warrants for arrest were issued but some cases were simply put off to see if the accused might deign to show up next time.

And the only real surprise at the end of the day? The fact that the bill for all this wasted time isn’t even more than £10million.