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A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. Practicing evil spells or incantations was proscribed and punishable in early human civilizations in the Middle East. In medieval Europe, witch-hunts often arose in connection to charges of heresy from Christianity. An intensive period of witch-hunts occurring in Early Modern Europe and to a smaller extent Colonial America, took place about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Counter Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 executions. The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In other regions, like Africa and Asia, contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, and official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon today.
In the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries, a King's Counsel is a senior trial lawyer appointed by the monarch of the country as a 'Counsel learned in the law'. When the reigning monarch is a woman, the title is called Queen's Counsel.
Michael Mansfield is an English barrister and head of chambers at Nexus Chambers. He was recently described as "The king of human rights work" by The Legal 500 and as a leading Silk in civil liberties and human rights.
Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan was a Scottish medium best known as the last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act 1735 for fraudulent claims. She was famous for producing ectoplasm which was proved to be made from cheesecloth.
Lady Elish Frances Angiolini is a Scottish solicitor. She was the lord advocate of Scotland from 2006 until 2011, having previously been solicitor general since 2001. She was the first woman, the first procurator fiscal, and the first solicitor to hold either post. Since September 2012, Angiolini has been the principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford. She has been a pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford since 2017 and is an Honorary Professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She also served as Chancellor of University of the West of Scotland from 2013 to 2021. Since leaving office she has led several investigations and inquiries, including a review of deaths in police custody commissioned by the then-Home Secretary Theresa May. In June 2022, she was appointed a Lady of the Order of the Thistle by Queen Elizabeth II; she is currently the only non-royal woman appointed to the order. In June 2023, she was appointed to the office of Lord Clerk Register by King Charles III, the first woman to hold the role since its creation in the 13th century.
Alan Turnbull, Lord Turnbull is a Scottish lawyer, and a Senator of the College of Justice, a judge of the country's Supreme Courts. He was one of the lead prosecutors in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial.
Francis Mulholland, Lord Mulholland, is a Scottish judge who has been a Senator of the College of Justice since 2016. He previously served from 2011 to 2016 as Lord Advocate, one of the Great Officers of State of Scotland and the country's chief Law Officer, and as Solicitor General, the junior Law Officer.
Joseph Beltrami was a Scottish lawyer of Italian-Swiss descent. He is acknowledged as one of the foremost criminal solicitors in Scottish legal history.
The trials of the Pendle witches in 1612 are among the most famous witch trials in English history, and some of the best recorded of the 17th century. The twelve accused lived in the area surrounding Pendle Hill in Lancashire, and were charged with the murders of ten people by the use of witchcraft. All but two were tried at Lancaster Assizes on 18–19 August 1612, along with the Samlesbury witches and others, in a series of trials that have become known as the Lancashire witch trials. One was tried at York Assizes on 27 July 1612, and another died in prison. Of the eleven who went to trial – nine women and two men – ten were found guilty and executed by hanging; one was found not guilty.
The Paisley witches, also known as the Bargarran witches or the Renfrewshire witches, were tried in Paisley, Renfrewshire, central Scotland, in 1697. Eleven-year-old Christian Shaw, daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, complained of being tormented by some local witches; they included one of her family's servants, Catherine Campbell, whom she had reported to her mother after witnessing her steal a drink of milk.
Dorothy Ruth Bain is a Scottish advocate who has served as Lord Advocate since 2021. She is the second woman to hold the office after Lady Elish Angiolini KC. Bain previously served as the Principal Advocate Depute from 2009 to 2011, the first woman to hold the prosecutorial position in Scotland.
In early modern Scotland, in between the early 16th century and the mid-18th century, judicial proceedings concerned with the crimes of witchcraft took place as part of a series of witch trials in Early Modern Europe. In the late middle age there were a handful of prosecutions for harm done through witchcraft, but the passing of the Witchcraft Act 1563 made witchcraft, or consulting with witches, capital crimes. The first major issue of trials under the new act were the North Berwick witch trials, beginning in 1590, in which King James VI played a major part as "victim" and investigator. He became interested in witchcraft and published a defence of witch-hunting in the Daemonologie in 1597, but he appears to have become increasingly sceptical and eventually took steps to limit prosecutions.
Lorna Allison Drummond, is a lawyer, a Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland, and the Justice of Appeal in the Court of Appeal in the Territories of St Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. She is a former crown counsel of Ascension Island, in which role, she advised the government on criminal and civil matters.
The witch trials in Connecticut, also sometimes referred to as the Hartford witch trials, occurred from 1647 to 1663. They were the first large-scale witch trials in the American colonies, predating the Salem Witch Trials by nearly thirty years. John M. Taylor lists a total of 37 cases, 11 of which resulted in executions. The execution of Alse Young of Windsor in the spring of 1647 was the beginning of the witch panic in the area, which would not come to an end until 1670 with the release of Katherine Harrison.
Euphame MacCalzean was a victim of the North Berwick witch trials of 1590–1591.
Derek Andrew Ogg QC was a Scottish lawyer who, through the Historical Sexual Offences Pardons and Disregards Scotland Bill, campaigned for automatic pardons for gay and bisexual men with historical convictions of sexual offences that are no longer illegal in Scotland. In 1983 Ogg established the Scottish HIV and AIDS awareness charity Scottish AIDS Monitor.
Margaret Barclay, was an accused witch put on trial in 1618, 'gently' tortured, confessed and was strangled and burned at the stake in Irvine, Scotland. Her case was written about with horror by the romantic novelist Sir Walter Scott, and in the 21st century, a campaign for a memorial in the town and for a pardon for Barclay and other accused witches was raised in the Scottish Parliament.
Witches of Scotland was a campaign for legal pardons and historic justice for the people, primarily women, convicted of witchcraft and executed in Scotland between 1563 and 1736. A pardon and an apology was made on 8 March 2022. The aim was also to establish a national memorial for the convicted from the Scottish parliament.
Zoe Venditozzi is a novelist and writer living and working in Scotland. Venditozzi was born in Lancashire and grew up in a small village in North East Fife and studied at University of Glasgow, She won the Guardian newspaper’s Not the Booker popular prize in 2013 for her first novel 'Anywhere's Better Than Here'. She leads the Witches of Scotland campaign with Claire Mitchell QC, teaches creative writing workshops and is a teacher of Support for Learning.
The sentencing of Ben Oliver, a 25-year-old man convicted of the manslaughter of his grandfather, was the culmination of a Crown Court case in England and Wales, and the sentencing was the first criminal court proceeding in England and Wales to be televised. Oliver was convicted of killing his 74-year-old bedbound grandfather, David Oliver, of Mottingham, South East London, following a trial at the Old Bailey, where he had pleaded not guilty to murder. At the televised hearing, which took place in Court Two of the Old Bailey at 10 am on 28 July 2022, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of ten years by Her Honour Judge Sarah Munro.
References
- ↑ "Claire Mitchell QC - Compass Chambers". www.compasschambers.com. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
- 1 2 Young, Jacqueline Wake. "Murder Island: Behind the scenes with legal expert Claire Mitchell QC". Press and Journal. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
- 1 2 Robertson, Aileen. "Top lawyer at forefront of campaign to pardon people accused of witchcraft backs call for memorial in Fife". The Courier. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
- ↑ "BBC World Service - Newsday, The fight for justice for Scotland's 'witches'". BBC. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
- 1 2 Garavelli, Dani. "The New Normal: Claire Mitchell QC on why digital devices must revolutionise courts post Covid-19". The Sunday Post. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
- ↑ "Lawyer of the Month: Claire Mitchell QC". Scottish Legal News. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
- 1 2 "Claire Mitchell QC seeks posthumous justice for Scotland's 'witches'". Scottish Legal News. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
- ↑ "Holyrood committee backs pardons for 4,000 executed for witchcraft". Scottish Legal News. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
- ↑ "Bloody Scotland Book Club". Bloody Scotland. 2021-05-03. Retrieved 2021-10-29.
- ↑ Bloody Scotland Book Club: May , retrieved 2021-10-29
- ↑ "Scots lawyers in new Ian Rankin series for Channel 4 – Murder Island". Scottish Legal News. Retrieved 2021-11-07.