r/Glasgow Tools

Lots of misinformation in this thread. Here are some facts:

McGarry plead guilty to the complaint at her first hearing way back. She then, subsequently, tried to withdraw her plea on the grounds that her previous defence team had wrongly advised her that she had no defence and had threatened to withdraw from acting if she plead any other way. On top of that, McGarry avers that she suffered seriously from post-natal depression and anxiety and that this combination of factors led to her being effectively railroaded into pleading guilty despite not having committed a crime (her position - presumably she can say she was a shitty bookkeeper but not a criminal). When she appeared again before Sheriff Crozier with new briefs, he refused to allow her to withdraw her plea of guilty. She now appeals that, having regard to her position, he was wrong to do so.

Separately, she appealed against Sheriff Crozier's sentence of 18 months' custody as excessive.

The appeal against her sentence has now been rejected. So, if her appeal against conviction fails, she will serve Sheriff Crozier's 18 months (although because it is a short sentence she will only be inside for 9).

Her appeal against her conviction is an appeal only against the refusal of Sheriff Crozier to refuse to allow her to withdraw her plea. As such, if she wins, then she will be allowed to enter a new plea of not guilty. The process is effectively "reset" to the stage it would have been had she been allowed to withdraw her plea. So she doesn't get any double-jeopardy shield, only the chance to plead not guilty and face trial.

Now, withdrawing a guilty plea is very hard, because you have to answer to the court's satisfaction the bloody obvious question: "Why did you plead guilty if you didnae dae it?" The court has McGarry's answer as described above: now we will see if it is good enough.

But even if she wins her appeal, all she gets is a trial (and from everything I've read, the evidentiary position against her is pretty damning).