John Scott: Don't give Crown two chances, just keep our law the way it is

I GAVE evidence to the Justice Committee on this and I believe that the current law should be retained. Someone who has stood trial and been acquitted was told that would be the end of the matter and everyone at the time understood that was the case.

In my view, not-proven is a proper verdict.

Rather than not-guilty, a jury is saying to the Crown that you have not proved to our satisfaction that this person is actually guilty.

It has been suggested from some quarters that perhaps we could take the existing not proven verdict and utilise that for a retrial if new evidence emerges.

That, however, is not something that I can agree with.

I believe that not-proven should not be seen as a way back into a retrial, because every trial has to be about what the Crown can prove.

The Crown should not be given two bites at the cherry. The Crown can decide when to bring trials and if they cannot convict someone, that should be the end of it.

If a not-proven verdict was seen as a way of getting to a retrial then the Crown could keep coming against someone until they got what they believed was the right decision.

I believe that this sort of approach would lead to many miscarriages of justice.

We should leave the Scottish system the way it is.

• John Scott is a lawyer and human rights expert