‘Bastard verdict’ is a common colloqialisation coined by Walter Scott.
For those not in the know, among multiple peculiarities of the Scottish legal system, Scotland had two acquittal verdicts: ‘Not Guilty’ and ‘Not Proven’. Although they carry different connotations, they were, strictly speaking, legally equivalent.
It raises interesting questions about whether this may have reduced conviction rates (good paper [here](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13218719.2023.2272912)). For this and other reasons, the ‘Not Proven’ verdict was abolished last year. Maybe convictions will jump up over time. Who knows?
It was already understood that ‘Not Guilty’ superseded ‘Not Proven’ over time, but I couldn’t find a graph anywhere attempting to track it. Maybe I missed something. Nothing much to say here except that ‘Not Proven’ usage declined gradually but wouldn’t inevitably have progressed to 0 given the slight plateau in recent years.
2 Comments
Exact sources inset. You can navigate to most of the raw data via these [Oxford’s Bodelian Library](https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/crimjudicialstats/scotland), [National Records of Scotland Archive](https://webarchive.nrscotland.gov.uk/20190708090510/http://www2.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/PubCriminalProceedings) & [Scot Gov website](https://www.gov.scot/collections/criminal-proceedings-in-scotland/) pages.
Made using R and ggplot2.
‘Bastard verdict’ is a common colloqialisation coined by Walter Scott.
For those not in the know, among multiple peculiarities of the Scottish legal system, Scotland had two acquittal verdicts: ‘Not Guilty’ and ‘Not Proven’. Although they carry different connotations, they were, strictly speaking, legally equivalent.
It raises interesting questions about whether this may have reduced conviction rates (good paper [here](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13218719.2023.2272912)). For this and other reasons, the ‘Not Proven’ verdict was abolished last year. Maybe convictions will jump up over time. Who knows?
It was already understood that ‘Not Guilty’ superseded ‘Not Proven’ over time, but I couldn’t find a graph anywhere attempting to track it. Maybe I missed something. Nothing much to say here except that ‘Not Proven’ usage declined gradually but wouldn’t inevitably have progressed to 0 given the slight plateau in recent years.
You can find Scottish people discussing it [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/1s6su03/the_not_proven_verdict_over_time/).
Tl;dr: it goes down.
And rightly so. Bad for the acquitted, bad for the victims, just bad all round.