“I kent your faither” seems to imply ‘don’t get too big for your boots’ – no matter what your success – but also reveals the face-to-face culture of Scotland. We are all, after all, “Jock Tamson’s bairns” and therefore the chances are that a stranger that you might encounter probably knows you or your family and that you in turn in all likelihood know those people that you bump into in the street.

Is that a strength in our culture, or a weakness?

I’ve thought about this question a lot recently in the wake of the conviction of Iain Packer last month for the murder of Emma Caldwell in 2005 – an outcome that would have shocked no one who might only have a remote interest in true crime.

Year after year, good investigative journalism, which in turn begat an excellent podcast about the case, named Packer as the culprit. And nothing that was ultimately relied on by Police Scotland to convict Packer of the murder was unknown in 2005 – no new evidence emerged in the intervening period that resulted in the jury’s guilty verdict.

There was no new forensic evidence or a recently developed scientific technique that could magically reveal the previously unidentified culprit. Everything that was put before the jury in 2024 was evidence that had already been gathered in the days and weeks after Emma had been murdered.

The Herald: Emma Caldwell Emma Caldwell (Image: free)

You might legitimately question why justice was delayed. What stopped the old Strathclyde Police from bringing a case against Packer?

Let’s think about the obstacles to getting justice in Scotland. A recent and very readable discussion paper called Access to Justice for Everyone, produced by the Scottish Human Rights Commission, identified four man barriers that blocked people getting justice: a lack of awareness of rights; a lack of legal, financial and emotional resources; the complexity of different complaints procedures; and weak mechanisms to promote system-level learning from past mistakes and violations.

All fair enough, but surely there is one obvious problem that wasn’t discussed: “I kent your faither”.

Did you watch the Netflix series The Murdaugh Murders? I did, initially because I had to discuss it on the This Morning sofa and I have to say that I found it illuminating. This series was concerned with the murder of Maggie Murdaugh and Paul, one of her sons, by her husband Alex in South Carolina in June 2021.

It was Alex Murdaugh, whose father, grandfather and great grandfather had all served as top prosecutors across a wide area of the state for over a century, who reported the murders to the police, although it took over a year before he was identified as a suspect and then charged. Frankly, the Murdaughs were a legal dynasty in South Carolina – seemingly above the law – and since his conviction for these two murders other suspicious deaths linked to the family have been identified.

What was the barrier to justice here? I am certain that everything that the Scottish Human Rights Commission suggested in their discussion paper would hold true for South Carolina, but there’s something else going on too.

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Surely an additional barrier to justice is the simple reality that in smaller societies – and South Carolina has a population of 5.3 million, just 100,000 people fewer than the population of Scotland – the importance of an extended network of acquaintances throws up further barriers related to a lack of anonymity and economic and personal conflicts of interest.

Everyone in the criminal justice system had had to work with the Murdaughs in the past, and many directly benefitted from their association with this powerful dynasty. Why rock the boat if something was amiss – even a murder – when your future might just depend on the connections and patronage at the heart of this system?

Is there not something of this in the Caldwell case too? Of course, we can point to the historic Strathclyde Police’s confirmation bias in refusing to consider Packer as a serious suspect, but the broader issue of how treating him as such might have breached informal but still powerful personal connections also needs to be considered. And why bring the case against Packer now? What has changed since 2005 to want Police Scotland to at last bring charges and the Crown Office to support them?

Clearly there has been a “Police Scotland” since 2013 and that at the very least allows those directly involved with the original investigation to avoid being tainted by their persistent failure to charge Packer. But why wait for over a decade to do so?

We also need to consider why the Crown Office seemingly did nothing to point out the absurdity of the “Turkish café” line of inquiry and that Scotland’s most senior law officer has only now revealed that there was sufficient evidence in 2008 to prosecute Packer. So, why did nothing happen?

I am married to a Scottish lawyer and through her I too have an extended network of family and friends who have all worked in the Scottish criminal justice system. My wife has uncles and several friends who were judges, High Sheriffs and I have a brother-in-law who was once a Procurator Fiscal. My late father-in-law had a very successful Glasgow law firm and became the Dean of the Royal Faculty of Prosecutors.

The Herald: Glasgow Sheriff Court Glasgow Sheriff Court (Image: Glasgow Sheriff Court)

I’ve seen up close and personal the very real interpersonal connections that make the Scottish legal system tick, and you cannot persuade me that this is not sometimes also a barrier to justice – no matter the personal integrity of those individuals who are involved.

Reputations are made or lost quite easily in this face-to-face world and the people who know that best of all are those who have to work within that culture. The tendency has to be one which is cautious, deferential and, after a mistake has been made, to close ranks and refuse to acknowledge that something went wrong. To do otherwise might jeopardise advancement, future projects, and even your economic success.

So yes, everyone “kens your faither” but perhaps sometimes the best reply might be “well, you’ll know that he wouldn’t want me to put up with that nonsense and that he’d want to see justice done.”

Professor David Wilson is an emeritus professor of criminology