Portrayed as a predator... yet his demeanour barely changed
IN some trials, guilty or not guilty, the verdict is greeted with a rush of emotion, a voluble release of tension built up over days of disputed evidence and hours of waiting for a window on the jury’s thoughts.
This trial involved Scotland’s former First Minister and, if all the charges had been proven, he would assuredly have been going to jail.
The pre-eminent Scottish politician of his generation would have suffered a career final act of cataclysmic proportions and the fallout would have engulfed his party for years.
And yet, as the acquittals came on each charge he faced, Alex Salmond did not even crack a smile. There were no puffed cheeks, mopped brows or, as one might have expected from many men in his position, floods of tears.
Instead Mr Salmond turned and thanked the guards on either side of him, rose and walked out of the dock a free man .
How starkly the end of the trial stood in contrast to its sensational beginning exactly two weeks earlier. Then, a woman who can be identified only as Ms H, a Scottish Government official, had alleged Mr Salmond ‘full on pounced’ on her at Bute House.
By the close of that Monday afternoon’s evidence, Scotland was left with an image of their First Minister circa 2014 face down, naked and snoring loudly on a bed in Bute House’s ‘Connery Room’, his drunken attempt at raping Ms H having run out of steam.
In the dock, he calmly drank water. His turn to speak must have seemed a long time coming, the jury’s rejection of her evidence even longer.
In the witness box, the onslaught of accusations played out over six days in which Salmond was portrayed as a boozy sexual predator who couldn’t keep his hands off the females around him.
Yet Salmond’s demeanour barely changed.
Only once, as civil servant Miss F was giving evidence, did his cool momentarily evaporate. He appeared distracted and rifled through his notes as Miss F alleged that Salmond had plied her with the same Chinese spirit Miss H mentioned in her evidence.
The jury learned too that Salmond apologised for the incident. She was summoned to his parliamentary office and left alone in a room with him once more while he made his excuses for his conduct.
So damaging did her evidence appear that, when Mr Jackson completed his cross examination, he could only offer a rueful shrug to his client in the dock. It seemed to say, ‘Well, I tried.’
In the event, the jury returned a verdict of not proven to the charge involving Ms F. The onslaught was far from over. Miss G claimed that Mr Salmond’s behaviour towards her resulted in a civil service rule that no female employee was to be left alone with the First Minister in Bute House at night.
Miss J had Mr Salmond pretending to be a zombie in an attempt to get into her personal space and kiss her while Miss K had him groping her buttock. Mr Salmond was cleared on all charges relating to their allegations.
The fightback began in week two as Mr Salmond took the oath and gave his own version of events. These, he said, were fabrications and exaggerations to fulfil a political purpose. Only Miss F, he said, had a genuine grievance, though she had lied about what happened and he apologised anyway. His one sexual encounter with Miss H, meanwhile, was consensual.
Standing there with one fist clasped to his chest, the other hand by his side, Mr Salmond could almost have been making a point of order in Westminster. Listening to his inquisitors’ questions, tilting his head that way he does to denote that he is paying attention, he could almost have been giving a TV interview, one of thousands he gave in his years as SNP leader.
But here his audience was tiny – just a few dozen people, including the nine women and six men of the jury – and the task of swaying their opinions more enormous than any electoral undertaking.
But persuade them he did. And when, after six hours of deliberation, they confirmed his innocence he walked away without celebration.
Calmly drank water
Cleared on all charges