An Inverness man has been acquitted of posting an explicit picture of his ex-wife after a row involving a pet parrot.
David Robertson had denied sending social media content and making phone calls of an offensive, grossly indecent or of a menacing nature, posting photographs of wife Mairita naked, partially clothed and in her underwear on social media, and threatening to publicly distribute similar photographs of her in February.
His trial started last week at Inverness Sheriff Court, where Mrs Robertson gave evidence.
Yesterday, the court heard that the grammar in the charge against David Robertson, of Telford Road, was “defective”.
Sheriff Margaret Neilson was also told that she should ignore earlier evidence that the images of Mrs Robertson were allegedly found on Mr Robertson’s phone.
It was explained to her that it was because a detective sergeant had failed to warn the accused that he didn’t have to hand over his phone for analysis.
There was also some confusion over the date on which Mrs Robertson’s phone was examined.
At the end of prosecution evidence yesterday, defence solicitor John MacColl successfully put forward a no case to answer plea due to a lack of corroboration of criminality against his client.
He said only Mrs Robertson’s evidence spoke to a crime.
Mr MacColl had also argued against fiscal depute Laura Ryan amending the charge and the section of the Communications Act under which Robertson was charged.
At the end of the Crown case, Sheriff Neilson criticised Ms Ryan’s unnamed colleague who had drawn up the charge, which she said was “defective” – and such incidents were becoming increasingly common.
She said that the trial could not be re-run from the start, refused Ms Ryan’s changes, then upheld Mr MacColl’s “no case to answer” submission and found Mr Robertson not guilty.
During the first day of the trial, the court was told that Mr Robertson, 52, had split up with his 27-year-old wife late last year and the couple had acrimonious talks over the return of his possessions, including his pet parrot.
Mrs Robertson told the court: “I went to check my messages on WhatsApp and I saw that Dave had changed his profile picture. It was an explicit one of myself naked from the waist down.
“I knew it was me because of a tattoo I have below my belly button.”
