The abolition of the ‘not proven’ verdict is long overdue

When 20-year-old Francis Auld walked free from Glasgow’s High Court in December 1992, there was widespread belief that a monster had got away with murder. The evidence he had killed 19-year-old Amanda Duffy had seemed compelling: the pair had been seen together in the Lanarkshire town of Hamilton shortly before her death. A deep bite-mark on the victim’s breast had, he admitted, been inflicted by Auld. The accused’s defence – that he had left her, shortly before the time of her death as established by a post-mortem examination, in the company of another man – was flimsy. Auld walked from the dock not because the jury found him ‘not guilty’ but because a majority agreed the case against him was ‘not proven’.

The Scottish Government has announced sweeping reforms of the justice system which will see this third verdict – this quirk of the Scottish legal system – removed. Other plans include reducing the number of jurors in criminal cases from 15 to 12 and trialling a pilot that would see rape and attempted rape trials held without a jury.