Scots law goes on trial Does controversial ‘not proven’ verdict have a case to answer?

The ‘not proven’ verdict is regularly debated within Scotland’s legal community, but it has now been given a new significance in the last few days after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon – a former lawyer – intervened in the discussion ...

IMAGINE you are accused of a serious crime. It goes to court. You’re tried in front of a jury of your peers. The verdict is in. Not proven. What happens next? Is it the same as not guilty? And if not, in what way is it different? Did the jury believe you? Or do they still have their doubts?

And how will the verdict be seen by your friends and family, your employer, the wider world. What will they think of it all? What does the not proven verdict actually mean?

This, essentially, is how the not proven verdict actually works in Scotland and has always worked. Questions are asked but never answered. Not proven is widely used but never explained.

No-one ever tells a jury what the definition might be nor do they tell them what the difference is between not proven and not guilty (if there is one). Indeed, judges in Scotland are specifically instructed not to explain the verdict to juries and there’s a good reason for that: nobody knows.

Which begs an important question for Scotland’s justice system: if lawyers can’t explain why there should be three verdicts in Scotland, then why do we still have them?

That question is one that has often come up over the years. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said that for a long time she had been a supporter of the three-verdict system – guilty, not guilty, not proven – based on the idea that it was one of the foundations of Scottish criminal law.

But she said this week that she had now changed her mind. “It is something that it is time to look at,” she said.

The reason for her change of mind, says Ms Sturgeon, is the use of not proven verdicts in rape cases. “The conviction rate for rape and sexual assault is shamefully low,” she said, “and I think there is mounting evidence and increasingly strong arguments that the not proven verdict is part of that.”

And, in a rare example of agreement between the two, the First Minister seems to have support from the leader of the Scottish Conservatives. Douglas Ross says his party is committed to abolishing not proven.

What has been particularly driving the argument in recent months has been a campaign by Rape Crisis Scotland and a woman known as Miss M. In 2018, Miss M sued Stephen Coxen, who was accused of