Historic not-proven verdict to be removed from Scots Law

Scotland's historic not-proven court verdict is to be scrapped after MSPs have voted on a package of reforms in our parliament at Holyrood. The verdict has been one of three possible verdicts in Scottish legal cases since the 17th century, with the other two being guilty or not-guilty. In a technical sense not-proven also meant "not guilty", but had a subtle difference attached - not-proven was taken to mean that although there was a belief that a suspect was responsible, there was no evidence to confirm it, and thus the same net result emerged, with the person tried walking away without a conviction as a free individual. The removal of not proven as a verdict removes one of the major historic differences between Scots and English law (although plenty of others remain!).

In the Mount Stewart Murder of 1866, in which my three times great grandmother Janet Rogers (Henderson) was murdered at her brother's farm in Forgandenny, Perthshire, a suspect was tried a year later and the case against him found to be not-proven, although the stigma of the case stayed with him after the result. (You can read more about the case in my book, The Mount Stewart Murder, available from History Press at https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/the-mount-stewart-murder/).

For more on the planned abolition of the verdict visit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8rndyyp7vo.

Chris 

Order Researching Ancestral Crisis in Ireland in the UK at https://bit.ly/4jJWSEh. Also available - Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors, Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.

Ancestry adds Scottish Indexes' Scottish Crown Counsel Procedure Books index

Ancestry has added the following index to Scottish court records as created by Scottish Indexes (www.scottishindexes.com):

Web: Scotland, Crown Counsel Procedure Books Index, 1822-1877
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/70963/
Source: Scotland, Crown Counsel Procedure Books Index, 1822-1877. Glasgow, Scotland, UK: Scottish Indexes. https://www.scottishindexes.com/ Accessed: 2024.

There is no description of the records on Ancestry's platform (I suspect Scots Law is too much for it!), but there is a guide to them on Scottish Indexes itself, available at https://www.scottishindexes.com/learningccpb.aspx, which notes the following:

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (now known as the COPFS) is Scotland’s public prosecution service and sudden or suspicious death investigation authority. Although modern records are closed, we can access historical records and these can be a great resource if you are tracing your Scottish family history. Records for preservation are held by the National Records of Scotland.

We have indexed historical cases reported to the Crown Counsel for an opinion, this is the AD9 collection held by the National Records of Scotland. These are cases where someone was accused of a crime and the Crown Office was asked for an official ‘opinion’.

As is the case today, some went on to the High Court, some to the Sheriff Court or another lower court, and some were dropped. This means that the Crown Counsel Procedure Books acts as a finding aid to other records

NB: Alternative indexing for the records is also available on Old Scottish from 1822-1856 at https://www.oldscottish.com/crown-counsel-procedure-cases.html

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.