humans

acquittal | 2016-03-30

permafrown

30 Mar 2016 — 2 min read

in the wake of Moxy Fruvous‘ lead singer‘s recent trial, i was intrigued by the potential difference between a verdict of not guilty and an acquittal, should there be a difference.

in a criminal case, whether a judge or jury trial, a variety of findings can result — these are: finding of guilt; stay of proceedings; and acquittal. of course, there is subtlety in each of these findings and, indeed, there are variations.

each of the findings can come from verdicts of guilty or not guilty or a variety of other verdicts (e.g. partial verdicts, directed verdicts, special verdicts, chance verdicts, perverse verdicts).

while there are lots of wonderful subtleties to dive into for the guilty verdicts and stays of proceedings, the question for me is: is an acquittal always a verdict of not guilty and, further, does that also mean innocence?

according to what i’ve been reading, acquittal is synonymous with a finding of not guilty; i.e. there is no significant difference between the two and one means the other. further, however, acquittal means that the burden of proof was not satisfied by the prosecution, but does not necessarily preclude guilt — an example of this would be the OJ Simpson trial, in which he was acquitted in the criminal case against him but was found guilty in the variety of civil suits against him, in which the requirements for proof are less heavy.

so, if we accept that acquittal means that the defendant was found not guilty, which by definition it does mean, then we need to look at the term not guilty.

what not guilty means is that the burden of proof was not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt by the prosecution. what it does not mean is that the defendant is innocent.

and there’s the critical difference and the piece that had me questioning the meaning of acquittal — innocent and not guilty are not the same thing.

you can read this little position paper which carries on a bit about the differences between not guilty and innocent: LINK

so, in the end, acquittal can mean a variety of things about the findings in a trial but it should be assumed, to answer my question, that an acquittal does mean a verdict of not guilty but a verdict of not guilty does NOT also mean innocence.

so far on acquittal

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