Scottish criminal law is unique in having three possible verdicts for a criminal trial: "guilty", "not guilty" and "not proven". Both "not guilty" and "not proven" result in an acquittal. The 'not proven' verdict in modern Scots criminal law can be described as an historical accident. Historically, there were no set forms for verdicts used by early juries, and their role was simply to find the guilt or innocence of the accused. The role of the jury changed when it became customary in the Justice Court to compose lengthy indictments, where facts were listed which culminated in a statement of the punishable character
Presumed Guilty: When Cops Get It Wrong and Courts Seal the Deal in 2005. The most recent case cited is the 2007 murder of Corryn Veronica Ann Rayney in 2007 where the victim’s husband Lloyd Rayney was charged and tried for her murder. In an exception to the other cases examined, Lloyd Rayney was found not guilty in 2012, and the verdict upheld on appeal in 2013. Part 2 is an examination of what went wrong and why with police investigations, the decisions to arrest and charge alleged perpetrators and the subsequent court hearings and jury verdicts. The author documents the historical, evidential, procedural and cognitive problems encountered by the criminal justice