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Mrs. Winifred Ewing
asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what convictions by Scottish criminal courts have been held to be wrongfully arrived at in the last 10 years; and if he will list them.
Mr. William Ross
The numbers of convictions in Scotland which were quashed on appeal to the High Court of Justiciary, together with the numbers of free pardons granted by the exercise of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy during each of the last 10 years, are shown in the table below.
| Number of convictions quashed by the High Court | Number of Free Pardons granted by the exercise of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy* | |
| 1974 | 54† | 6 |
| 1973 | 63 | 5 |
| 1972 | 43 | 3 |
| 1971 | 24 | 2 |
| 1970 | 22 | 1 |
| 1969 | 25 | 2 |
| 1968 | 26 | 5 |
| 1967 | 21 | 4 |
| 1966 | 26 | 4 |
| 1965 | 17 | 6 |
| *Some of these free pardons involved more than one person and exceptionally one of them involved 483 persons. | ||
| † The 1974 figure is provisional. | ||