On the Road to Injustice
This site started as a blog that was first published in April 2005 and tells the true story of a Road Rage incident on Dundee's Kingsway.
The event itself was fairly typical of poor behaviour on the roads.
But what followed was quite out of the ordinary.
From the moment the police became involved, followed by solicitors and courts,
I felt like a hitch-hiker aboard Heart of Gold, Douglas Adams's wholly
remarkable space ship - the one powered by an Improbability Drive * that gets its
weird crew out of many a tight spot.
A driver, angry at being held up on his very own local speedtrack, had a temper
tantrum and tailgated me.
But this didn't satisfy him so he reported me to the police.
His story was embellished with a number of improbable events, including a
witness who materialised shortly after the alleged incident. This was a solo
motorcyclist, who teleported in his own witness, a phantom pillion passenger.
I was charged with Dangerous Driving, an offence that carries a mandatory
driving ban and a potential jail term.
One might expect such a serious charge to have prompted the Crown Office and
Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) to instigate checks on its witnesses to
ensure that no part of its case was tainted.
Not so - the COPFS knew its three witnesses would be quite persuasive in court:
real, hard evidence would not be required.
The Scottish Crown has form for knowingly sending malicious accusations to
trial: Mckie, Megrahi, Stirrat, Green, Whitehouse and Clark have all been
recent victims of its particular modus operandi.
In these cases, and in mine, the Crown cared more about getting convictions
than getting to the truth.
My trial went ahead 9 months after the tailgating incident.
Despite having had many months to rehearse their stories, all
three witnesses slipped up during their testimonies: in fabricating an
imaginary drive along the Kingsway, they twisted the laws of space and time, just like the Adams space ship.
A credulous Sheriff picked up on just one of their improbable scenarios, but
allowed the witness concerned to claim that he was confused.
After the trial, I found documentary proof that the crux of the Crown's
fantasy, relating to the time and location of one of the fabricated incidents, was so unlikely it could only have been generated by an Improbability Drive.
Unfortunately, the Scottish legal authorities have ignored this evidence and
steadfastly refuse to accept that giving error-strewn testimony damages the
credibility of their witnesses.
As soon as the Drive reaches Infinite Improbability, “it passes through every conceivable point in every conceivable universe almost simultaneously”.
So, to get to a desired destination, all the Heart of Gold spaceship has to do is calculate how improbable it will be.
This means that during its journey, the ship can appear anywhere, and instantly: in the book it was able to rescue Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent from the vacuum of space one moment, then turn incoming nuclear missiles into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias the next.
And on Dundee’s Kingsway? Well, read on.
An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere
