(243)  SHAMELESS INDECENCY NOT A CRIME IN SCOTS LAW

 

The High Court of Justiciary in a five judge decision handed down on 22 July 2003 over-ruled McLaughlan v Boyd 1934 JC 19 and Watt v Annan 1978 JC 84 and held that there was no satisfactory basis in Scots law for shameless indecency being a crime.  Rather, in the modern law, where indecent conduct was directed against a specific victim who was within a class of victims whom the law protected, the crime was that of lewd, indecent, and libidinous practices, the essence of which was the tendency to corrupt the innocence of the complainer; but where indecent conduct involved no individual victim, it should only be criminal when it affronted public sensibility, which should, in modrrn practice, be described as public indecency”.  For the public element of the crime