Today I want to once again write about being wrongfully convicted. Last night, I watched a lot of the reruns of Shetland on ITV3 and at the end, I cried and cried and cried. Please allow me to explain why.

This series of six episodes told the story of the murder of Lizzie Cormuir and right from the beginning of the first episode, we know that Thomas Malone has served twenty three years in prison and that his conviction has just been quashed. Over the six episodes we learn of a dense web of the steps that the police went through to gain a conviction no matter what. Throughout the story, we see the deeply ingrained obsession that the police have, even when the specialist team arrive the lead officer proclaims, “we are satisfied the case against Malone was evidentially sound” and she is utterly convinced of his guilt.

The police absolutely, totally, utterly, unreservedly refuse to accept that Malone is innocent until the very end when Tosh says, “You know, Thomas, you have been very badly treated by a lot of people.” The whole weight of the Scottish Legal System has been against him and, of course, it is a very powerful force indeed. When politicians and other decision makers refuse to consider its imperfections then what can people like Malone do?

So why did I cry? In the last scene, Malone is sitting in the police station and all he has to do is make a quick statement and then he can be a free man, proven innocent. Then he suffers a heart attack and dies. In that police station. A dead man. An innocent man. A conviction engineered by police who cared more about a conviction than the truth. I recommend that you watch it if you can because the actor who played Thomas Malone was brilliant and really captured the psychological damage that can occur from a wrongful conviction.

It would be easy at this point to say, “Och, it’s only a story, it’s only TV” but to do so would be to bury your head in the sand to avoid looking at the reality. This wonderful Scottish legal system which prides itself on being the best in the world is imperfect and the first step to repairing it must be for that to be accepted. Like properly accepted. It is grounded on flawed concepts and it is fundamentally unsound.

There are not just isolated mistakes, it is inherently broken. They are doing an excellent job of hiding the “mistakes” that are uncovered, aided and abetted by the media and the social flow of believing the narrative but the fact is that people are getting convicted wrongfully and nobody an argue with that, it’s just the volume of wrongful convictions that people squabble over.

Stop squabbling and establish basic principals like all available information should be made available to the people making the final decision (the jury) rather than evidence being hidden; like full disclosure of police “evidence” to the prosecution including the evidence beneficial to the defence and like reintroducing the idea of innocent until proven guilty.

Thomas Malone is not a one-off. The state must make changes and our politicians need to take responsibility. Only then will I stop crying.

NaN.