As a graduate in law I have always been proud of the independence (and superiority?) of Scots Law, based as it is on Roman Law.

I therefore resented the introduction of the UK Supreme Court as a higher court of appeal than our own Scottish Appeal Court, especially as the new court was not even in existence when the Devolution Act was passed confirming the status of the Scottish legal system.

The European Convention on Human Rights has been formally adopted into Scots Law, and I therefore see no reason why the Court of Session (in civil cases) and the High Court of Justiciary (in criminal cases) should not take full cognisance of human rights issues while remaining the final arbiters in determining Scottish appeals cases. There should be no need for such appeals to go further to the UK Supreme Court or to the European Court of Human Rights. I have some personal experience of the time delays, costs and lengthy procedures of the latter body.

However in the specific case of the Fraser appeal, if the facts are as stated by Solicitor Advocate Martin Morrow (Letters, May 27), at the original trial very important evidence known to the police and the prosecution was withheld from the defence, either deliberately or accidentally. This evidence related directly to the central point of the prosecution case and, if it had been presented to the jury, the verdict might have been different.

This was the whole point of the appeal considered by the Scottish High Court of Justiciary, and it is difficult to understand why the bench did not accept the appeal and quash the conviction as unsafe.

The UK Supreme Court had no doubts about both the relevance and the critical importance of this evidence, and regarded its withholding as a clear breach of human rights.

It seems that in this case our Scottish appeals system may have failed and we should be grateful that an apparent injustice has been rectified. Justice must always be seen to be done.

Iain A D Mann,

7 Kelvin Court,

Glasgow.

The comments made by First Minister Alex Salmond, following Nat Fraser’s successful appeal to The Supreme Court, about the three English judges: that they knew little of the Scottish criminal process and, consequently, were unfit to judge, were atrocious.

Even worse, the First Minister belittled, by implication, the two Scottish judges in the Supreme Court decision, Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, both of whom joined in the unanimous decision. Each is a former Lord Justice General of Scotland and both are, rightly, regarded as the outstanding Scottish judges of recent years.

While there might be some truth in the comments that the English judges may not be overly familiar with the minutiae of the Scottish criminal process, those same judges grasped immediately what the appeal was about: that Mr Fraser did not receive a fair trial in that the jury in his case did not hear all the evidence.

It was fairly basic stuff and it is worrying, to say the least, that, seemingly, the First Minister does not have the intellectual capacity to understand what the appeal was about or, being the politician that he is, he is quite happy to misrepresent the situation for his own ends.

If there is anything worrying about the case it is, for me, that the three senior Scottish judges who heard Mr Fraser’s original appeal refused the appeal unanimously.

Perhaps, at the end of the day, this is about the difference between politicians and others who want the Scottish criminal process to remain living in the Dark Ages and those of us who want to see the continual and progressive reform that is so necessary in every criminal process?

John Macaulay,

46 London Road, Glasgow.