By Stuart MacDonald
HIGH Court judge Lady Scott has revealed succeeding in changing the law for women accused of killing their abusive partners is her proudest achievement.
The QC represented Kim Galbraith, who had her conviction for murdering her policeman husband Ian quashed in a landmark case.
Galbraith had originally been given a life sentence in June 1999 after she was found guilty of shooting dead her 37-year-old husband as he slept in the bedroom of their home in Furnace, Argyll.
Lady Scott, then a defence advocate, successfully argued in the appeal court that Galbraith should have been convicted of culpable homicide as she had faced years of violent sexual abuse at the hands of her husband.
The case led senior judges to rewrite Scots law to open up the defence of “diminished responsibility” to traumatised abuse victims.
Previously, courts applied a very narrow definition of diminished responsibility, insisting that it must be a condition very near to insanity.
Galbraith was prosecuted again and pled guilty to culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility in 2002. She was given a 10-year sentence but was released from prison after serving four years.
Lady Scott picked the case, which included an all-female legal team, as her favourite when being interviewed for the Hey Legal online platform.
She said: “There are memorable cases for me in the appeal court which changed the law and made a difference.
“Galbraith is my favourite of all of these because it really did make a difference to the defence of women who suffer abuse or violence in respect of women who have killed and that is an ongoing subject.
“The case was about diminished responsibility and changing the law on diminished responsibility.
“I think that really opened up a defence for those women and it was an all-women team as well so it was great.”
The law officer told how Lord Rodger, the judge who presided over the case, congratulated her of the way she conducted it.
She added: “I was hugely influenced by him.
“At the end of Galbraith he came off the bench and came into the well of the court and shook my hand.
“That was pretty special. It was probably my most memorable moment in court.”
Galbraith had told the judge at her original trial that years of sexual abuse by her bullying husband had driven her to shoot him in January 1999.
She was found guilty, but her lawyers challenged a ruling that evidence of mental illness was required before an accused could be held to be not fully responsible for their actions.
The court heard how Galbraith stole her husband’s loaded rifle and shot him in the head from close range while he was sleeping.
Galbraith initially alleged that two masked men had broken into her family home, shot her husband, raped her and set fire to the house.
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