YOUR correspondents Denis Bruce and William Durward (Letters, November 15) speak respectively for and against the proposal to abolish the somewhat anomalous not proven verdict in the Scottish courts. May I reprise a view that, to the contrary, there be four verdicts available: guilty and not guilty together with proven and not proven.
Guilt or innocent to a charge are matters of fact and not of opinion or judgement. If to a charge there is admission and unopposed eyewitness and supporting evidence, the accused is surely guilty as a matter of fact. If there is denial and unopposed eyewitness and supporting evidence of alibi for example, innocence is a matter of fact. In those and similar, admittedly rare, cases and only in those cases the guilty/not guilty verdicts should be available.
In all other instances the charge should need to go to proof and to be assessed as "beyond reasonable doubt" or "on balance of probabilities" or otherwise as the standard of proof be set. Thereby the charge would be proven or not proven as the case might be; reflecting the level of certainty, or doubt, as to the fact of the matter.
To the extent of the present admittedly-unsatisfactory arrangement as regards verdicts available, the law and logic are clearly at loggerheads.
Darrell Desbrow,
Overholm, Dalbeattie, Kirkcudbrightshire.
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