FROM July 1, new legislation allows victims of crime to ask the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) to review a decision not to prosecute their case.
Describing the effect of the new legislation on its website, COPFS says victims of crime can "ask the Scottish prosecution service to review some decisions not to prosecute when they can be changed".
Following a Fatal Accident Inquiry into the deaths of two young pedestrians in Glasgow in 2010, COPFS has invoked the spirit of the new legislation and applied it retrospectively by agreeing to review its decision, made in 2012, to drop a charge of causing death while driving uninsured against the driver involved in the accident ("Families of crash victims to have case reviewed", The Herald, July 2).
At first sight, this seems like a commendable and sensible move by COPFS. But, bizarrely, it then appears to negate the whole process, and pre-empt the outcome of the review, by adding that the decision not to prosecute the driver will not change. Where is the wisdom, or the justice, in spending public money on a review where there is a declared intention not to change anything?
It seems to me that COPFS is cynically and shamefully setting up the families of the two young victims for even more heartache.
Iain Stuart,
34 Oakbank Crescent, Perth.
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