Tony Lenehan: Abolishing Scotland’s ‘not proven’ verdict would erode trust in juries


09 Apr

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

Tony Lenehan, President of SCBA

 

 

I know that this quote is most often attributed (wrongly) to Spiderman. Perhaps it has its true genesis in Luke 12:48, but for present purposes the hint of superpower is apt.

Organisations such as Rape Crisis who are privileged to speak on behalf of victims of that most serious of crimes have amassed, in today’s society, something akin to a superpower. They represent people whose abuse engenders powerful emotions in the populace. The emotional response to the people who find themselves so abused is uniformly compassionate, coloured red by fury and outrage at the perpetrators. The visceral reaction towards such criminals is no less uniform.

Read the full article by the President of the SCBA in The Press and Journal here.