Limits on justice

This is the heading over a letter in today's issue of The Scotsman from Iain McKie (father of Shirley). In it he criticises the decision of the Lord Advocate to seek a hearing before a bench of five judges in an attempt to limit Abdelbaset Megrahi's grounds of appeal to those approved by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. A bench of three judges in an earlier case held that if the SCCRC referred a case back to the Appeal Court, the grounds of appeal submitted by the appellant need not be confined to the grounds upheld by the Commission. It is this precedent that the Lord Advocate is now seeking to have overruled.