A sheriff has criticised the prosecution service after she was forced to scrap a trial because of a lack of evidence.
Sheriff Elizabeth Munro told members of a jury that she was “extremely angry” before apologetically sending them home.
She was speaking on Wednesday at the end of the two-day trial of Chun Long Lin, who was accused of attacking a Dundee woman with a meat cleaver.
Chun (35) was found not guilty of the assault, which was alleged to have taken place at a flat on Dens Road nearly seven years ago.
Sheriff Munro told jurors there was insufficient corroboration to proceed with the trial and she spoke of the sequence of events that led to the alleged victim, Rong Ling (35), having to give evidence.
She said: “I’m extremely angry about this. That poor woman was put through an ordeal yesterday afternoon that she should never have been put through.
“I will be making a formal complaint. A victim should not be treated in that way.”
Dundee Sheriff Court had heard that Mrs Ling was attacked in her home in April 2006, leaving her with a number of wounds to her head and face and a badly-broken nose.
Sheriff Munro ruled there was nothing to corroborate the suggestion Chun was responsible for the assault, however.
She said: “There is a very important principle of Scots law, one of which we are very proud, that says no person can be convicted on the evidence of one person alone.
“No matter how credible or reliable the source of the evidence, there must be corroboration.
“There is sufficient evidence here that a crime was committed. However, there is no corroboration at all that the person in the dock was the person who committed the crime.”
Mrs Rong wept as she told the court she and her husband had taken Chun, her cousin, into their home and found him a job.
She said Chun had been a “good man” until he became addicted to gambling and had been acting normally before allegedly launching the attack.
Neighbour Fiona Malloch (38) described how Mrs Rong turned up at her door with her face and head “sliced open” at about 11pm on the night in question.
Mrs Rong was taken to Ninewells Hospital, where accident and emergency staff stitched her wounds and treated the open fracture to her nose.
The court heard from Dr Sarah Gotts (32), who said the injuries photographs of which were shown to the jury were likely to have been inflicted by a sharp implement.
The trial was cut short at the conclusion of the Crown’s evidence when Sheriff Munro ruled the matter of the attacker’s identity could not be corroborated.
Prosecutors had hoped to use Chun’s disappearance after the alleged incident as corroboration of Mrs Rong’s evidence.
Chun, who was described as a prisoner at HMP Perth, had denied a charge of seizing Mrs Ling by the neck, grabbing her hair and forcing her face into a pillow, pulling her and repeatedly striking her on the head and body with a meat cleaver or similar sharp instrument to her severe injury, permanent disfigurement and to the danger of her life.