Lawyers for a Scottish grandmother who was arrested for offering conversation in an abortion clinic buffer zone have welcomed a judge's decision to throw out the charges, declaring it a "free speech victory".
Rose Docherty, 75, was arrested last September for holding up a sign outside a Glasgow hospital that said "Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want". She was later charged with “influencing” within a “buffer zone”.
It was her second arrest for peacefully offering consensual conversation in a “buffer zone”, having been arrested the first time in February 2025. The Procurator Fiscal decided against prosecution in that instance.
She was the first person to be criminally charged under Scotland’s 2024 “buffer zone” law, which forbids the “influencing” of anyone seeking to access “abortion services” within 200 metres of every hospital in Scotland. Critics say it amounts to censorship.
Her arrest prompted international outcry, with the US State Department calling it “another egregious example of the tyrannical suppression of free speech happening across Europe”. Scottish Catholic bishops also spoke out in concern over freedom of speech and religion.
Sheriff Stuart Reid dismissed the charges during a hearing at Glasgow Sheriff Court on Monday after it emerged that there was little evidence to support the argument that Mrs Docherty had influenced anyone within the buffer zone.
Welcoming the outcome, Mrs Docherty said: “I was arrested, charged and prosecuted for nothing more than peacefully inviting consensual conversation in a public space that I was permitted to be in. When I was arrested, I was handcuffed, placed in the back of a police van and placed in a police cell for over two hours, without a chair to sit on.
“Simply for being available for the lonely, the afraid and the coerced, I have been treated like a violent criminal. But thankfully, today the charges have been dismissed. The judge ruled that the charges were irrelevant and that they were a breach of my Article 10 free speech rights."
She added, "Nobody should be criminalised for consensual conversations and I’m glad that that truth has been vindicated here today.”
Jeremiah Igunnubole, barrister and legal counsel for ADF International, which supported her case, said Mrs Docherty's "free speech rights have been vindicated".
He said it was "a significant victory for freedom of expression in the United Kingdom" as he called on the police and prosecutors to focus their resources on tackling real crime.
“The prosecution of Rose has no place in a free and democratic society. No one should ever be criminalised for peaceful speech, least of all for making a peaceful and consensual offer to speak," he said.
"It is bad enough to be prosecuted for exercising a fundamental right; it is far worse that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service brought these charges without conducting even the most basic investigative inquiries, such as establishing whether anyone had been criminally influenced by Rose’s conduct within the ‘buffer zone’.
“This prosecution is emblematic of the deepening free speech crisis in the UK. We call on the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, together with Police Scotland, to cease such targeted prosecutions and instead focus their resources on tackling the serious and growing crime problems Scotland faces.
“Above all, this case has starkly exposed the flaws in these poorly drafted, censorial, and undemocratic ‘buffer zone’ laws. They have created confusion for police officers and delivered injustice to Rose and others who have endured the humiliation of arrest, imprisonment, and prosecution simply for seeking to love their neighbour and exercise their rights in the gentlest manner possible."
He called on Parliament to urgently repeal the buffer zone laws and replace them with "robust protections that genuinely strengthen freedom of expression".
