Let’s extend not proven verdict

ANDREW Tickell’s article about the not proven verdict deserves comment (“Not proven support dwindles to legal nationalist hardcore”, March 31). First, having more than two verdicts is not unique. The Italian system has five verdicts for a panel of advocates to choose from.

Secondly, when removal of the not proven verdict was the subject of a parliamentary debate at Westminster in 1995, it was the rape crisis centres in Scotland which were strongly in favour of its retention because a not guilty verdict stigmatised the woman whereas not proven stigmatised the man. Their current reversal of this position is inexplicable.

Far from removing this verdict, we should be enhancing it to resolve the anomalies that exist within the two-verdict system. For instance, in the OJ Simpson case he was found not guilty in a criminal court because of “reasonable doubt”, but was then found guilty in a civil court using the “balance of probabilities”. This begs the fundamental question of how the same evidence can be used to find a man guilty of a crime which the state has stipulated he did not commit?

The above anomaly could be resolved if a civil case could only proceed when either a guilty or not proven verdict was reached. This would protect the genuinely innocent while giving the victim’s family recourse to a measure of justice. Furthermore, it could resolve another anomaly offered up by the removal of the double jeopardy rule.

Double jeopardy was first jettisoned in England because too many people were found to have committed a crime after being declared not guilty, thereby demonstrating that it is the two-verdict system itself which is flawed.

The direct consequence of this is that a not guilty verdict is no longer a reaffirmation of your innocence at the conclusion of the trial. It simply means that you are innocent “on licence” as and until any new “convincing” evidence can be found against you. The Shirley McKie case demonstrated what can happen when “convincing” forensic evidence is produced at a trial.

The likelihood of an innocent person being found guilty under the revised double jeopardy rule thus moves from the theoretical to the distinctly possible. This would defeat the purpose of its reintroduction, which was to identify and prosecute the genuinely guilty. But if not proven becomes the only verdict whereby a double jeopardy prosecution can be advanced, then it would go some way towards removing that second anomaly.

Sadly, rather than embracing such fine tuning of the existing system the current Bill reeks of rampant political calculation. It was perhaps asking too much for it to be an exemplar of rational thought processes.

Robert Menzies, Falkirk.