A Dundee woman jailed for a year for contempt of court has had her conviction and sentence quashed.
Leanne Martin, 29, was given a prison sentence by Sheriff Richard Davidson for her “continued prevarication” while giving evidence during an assault trial.
High Court appeal judges, however, said that Sheriff Davidson had “failed to follow clear guidance” from existing procedural safeguards and overturned his decision.
Ms Martin gaveevidence last August at the trial of 28-year-old Kenneth Melville Fraser, who was found guilty of assaulting Ross Gillan by striking him on the head with a glass bottle to his severe injury and permanent disfigurement.
Sheriff Davidson had noted: “Virtually from the outset, she was prevaricating, telling the jury that at the relevant time she had had ‘a really bad drug problem’.”
The sheriff had adjourned the trial and warned Ms Martin of the consequences of perjury and prevarication and allowed her to be represented by solicitor Jim Laverty.
Mr Laverty had made clear to Ms Martin the “risks she was courting” and she concluded her evidence fully understanding the consequences of committing perjury and prevarication.
Ms Martin was then placed in the dock and told by Sheriff Davidson she was formally being held in contempt of court.
The appeal ruling stated: “He gave no prior warning of his intention to do so. In particular he did not articulate what she had done or said what he considered might amount to contempt of court.
“Nor did he give any opportunity to the petitioner or her solicitor to make any representations prior to deciding whether or not to conclude that she had been in contempt.”
The appeal stated that, by doing so, the sheriff “failed to follow the clear guidance provided by this court.”
Setting aside the conviction and sentence, Lady Paton’s ruling concluded: “No doubt the sheriff was understandably frustrated by the fact that an eye witness to an assault appeared to be inexplicably unwilling rather than unable to give a straightforward account of what and who she saw at the relevant time.
“Frustration, however, gives rise to the risk of a rush to judgment, which…must be guarded against, principally because an injustice may be done.
“There was no need for the sheriff to rush to deal with the contempt issue here and no excuse for not affording the petitioner a proper hearing, which is what, essentially, occurred.
“A wiser course might have been to refrain from addressing his concerns at all at that anxious and, perhaps, heated stage and wait until after the jury’s verdict which, in the event, would have enabled him to reflect, calmly, on whether or not the matter required to be addressed at all.”