Bo'ness baby batterer learns appeal decision

Scott Innes (31) was jailed for three years in 2019.

He had been looking after the 11-week-old infant, the weight of just two bags of sugar, while her mother went to the bingo in Bo’ness.

Suddenly he phoned to say she had "fallen off the sofa" onto a laminate floor, even though, at only two days past what would have been her full-term delivery date, the mite was not independently-mobile.

He followed up with a photo - showing bruising right across her forehead, down to her ear, and starting to spread down her whole face.

Her mother and grandmother rushed home and the child was taken to the Forth Valley Royal Hospital where she was found to have subdural bruising on the brain and a sub-conjunctival haematoma to her right eye.

She also had three fractured ribs and "extensive intercranial injuries". She later developed "structural changes" to her brain, which lost volume while increased internal pressure caused her head to increase in size.

More than two years after the incident, she still had a "shunt" in her head to reduce this pressure.

Stirling Sheriff Court heard that although there was no direct evidence of how Innes, the only person with the child on the evening of May 30, 2017 when the incident took place - had inflicted her injuries, the medical evidence was "overwhelmingly clear" that they were not accidental.

Doctors said her rib injuries must have been caused by "significant force, such as squeezing" and the eye haematoma also by significant force, perhaps by shaking.

After a six day trial, a jury of seven men and eight women took little more than two hours to find Innes, of Ritchie Place, Bo'ness, guilty of assaulting her to her severe injury and permanent impairment and inflicting blunt-force trauma on her "by means to the prosecutor unknown". The verdict was by majority.

Innes, a first offender, who pleaded not guilty, did not give evidence.

He later appealed his conviction, his lawyer telling the High Court that the trial Sheriff, William Gilchrist, had over-stated the position by telling the jury "there were no other incidents" in the lead-up that would have explained the baby's injuries, when the true position was that there was no evidence of other incidents.

Rejecting his appeal yesterday, Lady Dorrian, the Lord Justice Clerk, sitting with Lord Glennie and Lord Turnbull, said while it might have been preferable if the sheriff had been more precise, there was "ample" evidence from which the jury would have been entitled to conclude that the appellant had assaulted the child on various occasions, causing her injuries.

Lady Dorrian added that the sheriff's directions, overall, were "quite clear and balanced".

Sheriff Gilchrist said at the time that one of the difficulties he faced in sentencing was that the "precise mechanism" by which the child received her injuries remained unclear.

But imposing the three year jail term, he told Innes: "On the other hand the degree of harm is not in doubt.

"Based on the evidence, I have to believe this was an aberration on your part, born out of frustration, or whatever, but it had very serious consequences in respect of a young baby in your care."

Prosecutor Samantha Brown said: "People can do things that are evil without warning. The tragic inescapable truth is that Scott Innes deliberately inflicted these injuries on this baby."

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