ANOTHER Highland sheriff who hit the headlines earned nicknames to fit the wild justice he dispensed, writes Alexander Linklater.
In more than 30 years on the bench in Wick, Caithness, Ewen Stewart managed to achieve status as both the King Saul of judges and the Inspector Clouseau of Highland trials.
His debut as Scotland's most eccentric legal performer came in 1976 when he told his court he might turn to crime himself if he was well enough paid.
Later when he railed at the Sutherland town of Brora, accusing it of being the drinking capital of the north. He marvelled that a Brora man could reach the age of 33 before appearing in court for the first time.
Although there was outrage at the slur, many Caithness people came to regard him as a kind of Solomon whose personalised version of the law was based on intimate knowledge of the lives of local people.
However, his attitude to sentencing became more capricious and confrontations with the Court of Criminal Appeal more regular. Drinking and driving offences drew his particular ire with heavy fines.
One Lord Justice General described Sheriff Stewart's courtroom explanations for heavy fines as ''fictional observations''. Another, Lord Emslie, said: ''We have had to point out to the sheriff in the past that he must not take into account irrelevant material, sheer speculation, nor material discovered by his own researches or which proceeds upon local gossip.''
Attempts to remove him were met by the response: ''I will go on until my time is up or until I am kicked out.''
It took Ian Lang's intervention to do that in 1992.
He has been challenging the decision ever since.
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