{"id":478961,"date":"2026-06-02T10:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T10:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/478961\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T10:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T10:01:09","slug":"peter-murrell-court-hearing-how-former-snp-chief-embezzled-400000-follow-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/478961\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Murrell: Court hearing how former SNP chief embezzled \u00a3400,000 – follow live"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why won’t Murrell be sentenced today?published at 10:51 BST<\/p>\n

10:51 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"David Henderson
Scotland news correspondent<\/p>\n

Normally, after the guilty party’s crimes have been read out in court, the defence would stand up and present a plea in mitigation – the case for
\nleniency.<\/p>\n

They’d
\nemphasise the early guilty plea, his age, his clean record, any remorse, and
\nargue for the shortest possible sentence. <\/p>\n

After
\nthat, the judge would pass sentence.<\/p>\n

But
\nthat didn’t happen today.<\/p>\n

The
\njudge, Lord Young, wants a criminal justice social work report before sentencing – an assessment of Murrell’s background, circumstances and risk.<\/p>\n

These
\nnormally take three to four weeks to prepare. <\/p>\n

He
\nordered one last week – so the case has been “continued” for reports,
\nwith the mitigation and sentencing expected at a hearing on 23 June.<\/p>\n

There’s
\na tactical dimension too.<\/p>\n

Murrell\u2019s
\ndefence team may actually prefer a gap between the narrative and the mitigation – letting the shock of the detail settle, before trying to reframe the story. <\/p>\n

Nobody
\nwould want to plead for sympathy straight after the court has heard about the
\nembezzlement of salt and pepper grinders costing \u00a32,618.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why won’t Murrell be sentenced today?published at 10:51 BST 10:51 BST David HendersonScotland news correspondent Normally, after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-478961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}