The prominent lawyer who defended Alex Salmond against charges of sexual assault has been suspended from practising for 15 weeks after naming two of Salmond’s accusers on a train.
Gordon Jackson KC was filmed talking on a busy train about the case while it was under way. He named two of the female complainers, making disparaging remarks about one of them and about his client, the former first minister.
In footage published by the Sunday Times, Jackson was heard to say of one woman: “We thought that eventually people might think she’s a flake and not like her. All I need to do is put a smell on her.”
He said Salmond, who was cleared by the jury in March 2020 of 13 charges of sexual assault and breach of the peace, was “an objectionable bully” and “a nasty person to work for”.
At the start of the trial, Lady Dorrian, the trial judge and Scotland’s second most senior judge, had passed an order prohibiting the identification of the complainers, giving legal force to a longstanding convention in Scotland that sexual assault victims are not named.
At the time Jackson was the dean of the Faculty of Advocates, the rule-setting body for Scotland’s most senior lawyers, and in overall charge of its members’ conduct. Jackson voluntarily quit as dean after complaints were made about his remarks by Sandy Brindley, the chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland.
A former Labour MSP, Jackson originally faced a five-month suspension but after lodging appeals, a disciplinary panel has ruled he should be suspended for 15 weeks.
The panel said it accepted he was “genuinely remorseful” but said he had committed a “serious and reprehensible departure from professional standards”.
Jackson’s lawyers said he was discussing his strategy in the case and had not intended to name or belittle the complainers. The disciplinary panel said, even so, his “conduct showed a reckless indifference to maintain the anonymity secured by the order”.
They said: “It ought to have been obvious to Mr Jackson that to name complainers publicly posed a real risk to the order of the court and was contrary to his duty as an advocate. There was a material risk to the complainers of being identified. Significant trauma would thereby be inflicted on them, knowing that names had been publicly spoken.”
When the footage emerged, Jackson emailed fellow lawyers to suggest the filming of his remarks may have been a deliberate setup. That was rejected by the disciplinary panel. “Mr Jackson named two complainers in a public place [and] he did so openly and afforded a member of the public the opportunity to record the conversation on a mobile phone.”
Brindley said: “The impact of Mr Jackson’s behaviour has been compounded by the significant length of time this process has taken. It should not have taken over three years to get to this point.
“The complaints process has also been conducted with a worrying lack of transparency. The long and complex complaints process acts as a deterrent for anybody who wishes to raise concerns about the conduct of an advocate and we call for the faculty to review it robustly and meaningfully.”
