Case collapses after police spying ruled a trap

Officers wrong to place accused in adjoining cells so they could eavesdrop

News, 18 May 2006

A High Court bank robbery trial has collapsed after the judge ruled evidence of a police surveillance operation inadmissible.

Lord Macphail in the High Court at Aberdeen sustained objections by two of the accused, Lee Higgins and David Scott, who were tried along with Adam Murphy, on the ground that the police had set out to trap them.

The accused were charged with being the masked raiders who assaulted at knifepoint security guards delivering cash to a bank in the city on 27 July 2005, making off with £187,500.

In his written opinion just released, Lord Macphail said that Higgins and Scott were detained early the following morning and after interview were arrested but not charged. At that stage the police still did not have many reasons to link them to the robbery.

Deliberate move

The detectives in charge of the inquiry then had Higgins and Scott moved so they were in adjacent cells in police headquarters, deliberately so that listeners could be posted to try and find out who else was involved and what had happened to the money. The police did not learn anything of this nature but did hear the accused apparently planning to give a false account.

The Crown argued that the police had been passive eavesdroppers, and leading the evidence would not deprive the accused of a fair trial. Lord Macphail however said that the police methods "can only be described as a trap... The object was to trick [the accused] into believing that they would not be heard".

Lord Macphail ruled that the methods used would have been illegal at common law and breached the provisions on covert surveillance in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. He commented that no justification had been given for the failure to observe the Act.

No justification

Although the charge was a serious one, he continued, there were no circumstances that justified this disregard of the law. "If the conduct of the police in this case were to be condoned by the court, they would be entitled to repeat such conduct in many other cases."

After the Crown closed its case Lord Macphail upheld a defence submission of no case to answer. His opinion can be read at http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/2006HCJ05.html .