In many discussions I'm pulled back to the distinction between not-guilty and innocent as a way to demonstrate how the burden of proof works and what the true default position should be in any given argument. A lot of people seem to not have any problem seeing the distinction, but many intelligent people for some reason don't see it.
In this article I explain why the distinction exists and why it matters, in particular why it matters in real-life scenarios, especially when people try to shift the burden of proof.
Essentially, in my view the universe we are talking about is {uncertain,guilty,innocent}, therefore not-guilty is guilty', which is {uncertain,innocent}. Therefore innocent ⇒ not-guilty, but not-guilty ⇏ innocent.
When O. J. Simpson was acquitted, that doesn’t mean he was found innocent, it means the prosecution could not prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. He was found not-guilty, which is not the same as innocent. It very well could be that the jury found the truth of the matter uncertain.
This notion has implications in many real-life scenarios when people want to shift the burden of proof if you reject a claim when it's not substantiated. They wrongly assume you claim their claim is false (equivalent to innocent), when in truth all you are doing is staying in the default position (uncertain).
Rejecting the claim that a god exists is not the same as claim a god doesn't exist: it doesn't require a burden of proof because it's the default position. Agnosticism is the default position. The burden of proof is on the people making the claim.
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Notes -
The Scottish legal system has the verdict of not proven, though reformers seem to be trying to get it abolished.
I agree it should be abolished. It should not matter what the jury thinks beyond what is proven, at least not in legal proceedings. Only whether or not the prosecution established certain facts and supported them with enough proof. Jury's personal opinions should play as little role as possible. Of course, there's no way to exclude it completely, but at least we shouldn't pretend there can be case where the jury knows The Truth and not only looking at the prosecution's work and decides if they did convincing enough job or not. It is a very rare occasion that the jury would be able to actually know what happened beyond the case made by the prosecution, so ideally only two verdicts should be possible - either convincing enough (called "guilty") or not convincing enough (called "not guilty"). "Not guilty" is "not proven" - it can't be anything else, as the jury aren't clairvoyant, just as "guilty" only can mean "proven" - in both cases, we should recognize the limits of our system and fallibility of it, and accept that's the best we can do. Adding more states to it means we're pretending there's some higher knowledge we could use but somehow we don't. But where that higher knowledge would come from?
Isn’t that what a jury does? Evaluate the evidence and make a judgement call?
Assuming Scotland uses normal standard of beyond reasonable doubt it seems to me not proven is where you’d find guilt on a more likely than not standard but hasn’t been established at the highest standard.
Yes, and if the call is "not enough proof" then the verdict is "not guilty". Not "maybe guilty as hell, but we are letting him off on technicality". "Not guilty" and that's it. You can not throw a power of state at a person, have this power to be unable to prove the guilt and still have the person to bear the stain of the accusation without any ability to clear oneself.
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