Scotland has an entirely distinct legal system with a single unified police agency (with it's own serious and organised crime division). There has never been a connection between the legal system in Scotland and that of England and Wales. Scots laws are primarily passed by the independent Scottish Parliament with only a small number of matters reserved for the UK Parliament in London which passes distinct statutory instruments for Scotland to create approximate equivalence between the 'English' and 'Scottish' laws. These result in anomalies like the violent imagery laws in Scotland are more strict than those of England, meaning a cartoon image in England can be legal to possess but have strict liability severe punishment in Scotland; Scotland retains a right to silence upon arrest but in England remaining silent can be considered by a court to be an admission of guilt (sorry US readers, there is no 5th amendment in England and Wales; you do not have the option of "never talk to the police").
The difference has long irritated 'the English Establishment' so much that an informal verse was sung at one point as an adjunct to what is now the UK National Anthem (but was not officially added contrary to some popular belief[1]).
It also gave rise to the deeply racist phrase "Scot Free" in relation to people being acquitted in trials - during 'show trials' to crush anti-establishment figures, Scots juries would regularly return 'not proven' verdicts as it was necessary for all parts of an indictment to be 'proved' and juries used the verdict to rebel against unjust trials of English opponents. The phrase was used to denigrate those thus freed by juries and persists throughout the English speaking world today and is in common usage despite it's origin as a racist epithet towards Scots and the Scottish legal system.
To save everyone a google, the etymology of scot free is not based in Scottish juries.
The phrase in its oldest form literally refers to getting away without paying tax. Scot is cognate with the Danish (Scandinavian) word skat which means both tax and treasure - the latter meaning incidently being why it can be used as a term of endearment.
This later was broadened to mean getting away without any punishment. I could find no reference online to its use for show trials.
For those interested in what the gp could be referring to: There is a Wikipedia article and other sources on the "not proven" verdict of Scottish juries which was/is in practice an acquittal. It's apparently still used in roughly 1/3rd of cases. There is a list of significant cases for which the verdict was used, though none seem to be related to political protest.
> There has never been a connection between the legal system in Scotland and that of England and Wales. Scots laws are primarily passed by the independent Scottish Parliament
To add some important context here, the Scottish Parliament came into existence in 1999. So itβs by far not the case that the majority of laws in effect in Scotland were passed by the Scottish Parliament.
The difference has long irritated 'the English Establishment' so much that an informal verse was sung at one point as an adjunct to what is now the UK National Anthem (but was not officially added contrary to some popular belief[1]).
It also gave rise to the deeply racist phrase "Scot Free" in relation to people being acquitted in trials - during 'show trials' to crush anti-establishment figures, Scots juries would regularly return 'not proven' verdicts as it was necessary for all parts of an indictment to be 'proved' and juries used the verdict to rebel against unjust trials of English opponents. The phrase was used to denigrate those thus freed by juries and persists throughout the English speaking world today and is in common usage despite it's origin as a racist epithet towards Scots and the Scottish legal system.
[1] http://www.sath.org.uk/edscot/www.educationscotland.gov.uk/s...