In 2007, Lord Hamilton clashed publicly with the Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, over the collapse of the World's End murders trial. The trial judge, Lord Clarke, had ruled there was insufficient evidence for the jury to convict and threw the case out. The Lord Advocate, who is the senior Law Officer in Scotland, had made a statement to the Scottish Parliament, saying she was "disappointed" at this decision. However Lord Hamilton said her intervention had undermined the independence of the judiciary.