prosecutor

Prosecutor, advocate depute Liam Ewing KC, asked Mrs MacKinnon what she had said to her brother.

Opening the trial, prosecutor Nicholas Lumley KC said Charlie, who could "walk and talk", had suffered multiple injuries in the weeks and months before his death and he had been "cruelly neglected".

But, according to former BBC TV producer Andrew Graystone in his 2021 book about the abuse, the case was bedevilled with problems, police documents were missing and Smyth’s legal prowess led to the prosecutor being removed - another one was never appointed, so the case was essentially shelved in 1997.

Some downballot results seem to confirm this anti-incumbent fervor: Voters in California, for example, tossed out the progressive L.A. prosecutor George Gascón, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao.

But some Republicans already have questioned at least one Trump choice, notably Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, the pick for attorney general, the top prosecutor in the US.