SCOTS law still has its fair share of odd features – but for international lawyers, nothing is stranger than the fact we have three verdicts in criminal cases. Visiting professors frown and want historical explanations. Exchange students look baffled as the colourful eccentricity of our old and occasionally craggy legal system is explained to them.

But the “not proven” verdict’s long service as a ­winning pub quiz answer, source of ­disagreement between lawyers and bafflement for ­international visitors, is finally coming to an end.

The subject of debate for centuries, Holyrood’s Criminal Justice Committee concluded last week that Sir Walter Scott’s “bastard verdict” has finally “had its day and should be abolished”. The influential committee of MSPs reported on the Victims, Witnesses and Criminal ­Justice Reform Bill on Good Friday.

The bill includes more and less controversial elements.

The Scottish Government want to create a victim’s commissioner for Scotland, to write the principle of trauma-informed justice into the law, to create a new specialist sexual offences court, and give complainers in sexual offence cases an automatic right to anonymity and access to independent legal representation when defence or prosecution lawyers want to ask questions about their private lives and medical and sexual history.

Judge-only trials

Much of the critical attention has – ­rightly – focused on the controversial ­proposal to pilot judge-only trials for some serious ­sexual offences, but proposals were also floated to change the number of jurors deciding cases, and introduce a new ­qualified majority for them to reach a ­verdict.

The writing has been on the wall for “not proven” since the last Holyrood ­election. The Scottish Conservatives pledged to scrap the third verdict in their 2021 ­manifesto. Survivors of ­sexual violence have also been instrumental, launching the End Not Proven campaign, arguing that is wrongly treated as a “compromise” ­between guilt and innocence, and is a cold comfort for complainers at the end of a criminal case.

Support for this “unique and ­historic” quirk has dwindled to a........

© Herald Scotland