Not Proven has gone. What that actually means if you're facing a jury

For nearly three hundred years, a Scottish jury had three answers available to it. Guilty. Not guilty. Not proven

On 1 January 2026, that changed. The not proven verdict was abolished for all new criminal trials in Scotland under the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Act 2025. Juries now have two verdicts, exactly as juries do elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

Most of the coverage at the time focused on what the change means for complainers. Very little of it addressed the question we are asked most often across the table in Alexandria: what does this mean for me, if I'm the one in the dock?

What has actually changed

Three things happened on the same date, and they are easy to confuse.

The third verdict is gone. A jury must now decide between guilty and not guilty. There is no middle option.

The majority needed to convict has risen. A Scottish jury has fifteen members. Until this year, a simple majority — eight of the fifteen — was enough to convict. Now at least two-thirds of the jury must agree, which in practice means ten. That is a meaningfully higher bar than the one that existed before.

Research into jury deliberations has been enabled. In time this will tell us far more than we currently know about how Scottish juries actually reason.

The reforms apply to new proceedings. In solemn cases, the test is whether the indictment had been read to the jury before 1 January 2026. In summary cases, it is whether the first witness had been sworn. Cases already under way when the change came in continue under the old rules.

The part that matters to an accused person

The two changes pull in opposite directions, and anyone telling you the reform is straightforwardly good or bad for the defence is oversimplifying it.

Losing not proven removes an option that, in a genuinely finely balanced case, some juries reached for. It was never a legal halfway house — an accused acquitted on a not proven verdict walked free on exactly the same terms as one acquitted on not guilty — but it existed as a psychological release valve. A juror who was uneasy but not persuaded could express that unease. That release valve has gone. The concern raised by the Law Society of Scotland and by many defence practitioners is that some of those jurors will now move towards guilty rather than not guilty.

Against that, the higher majority threshold is a real safeguard. Under the old rules, a jury split eight to seven — a jury in which nearly half its members were not persuaded — could convict. That is no longer possible. Five jurors unpersuaded of guilt is now enough to prevent a conviction. On the arithmetic alone, the defence has more room than it had before.

What this means in practice is that the reforms have raised the value of persuading a meaningful minority of the jury, and reduced the value of leaving them merely uncomfortable. Discomfort used to have somewhere to go. Now it has to be converted into genuine doubt.

What that changes about preparing a defence

Trials are won and lost long before the verdict. But the arithmetic of the verdict shapes how a defence is built, and this reform sharpens three things.

Reasonable doubt has to be articulated, not implied. It is no longer enough to leave a jury vaguely unsatisfied with the Crown case. The doubt has to be identified, named and made concrete enough that ten people cannot agree it has been overcome.

The quality of preparation matters more, and earlier. Precognition of witnesses, scrutiny of disclosure, forensic and expert evidence, CCTV, phone data, the timeline — the work that creates specific, identifiable doubt is work that takes time. It cannot be assembled in the days before a trial diet.

Early decisions carry more weight. Whether to give a statement at interview, what to say at first appearance, whether a plea should be tendered at all and if so to what — these decisions have always mattered. They matter more when the verdict structure is less forgiving of ambiguity.

If you have been charged

A police interview is the earliest and often the most consequential stage of a criminal case. You are entitled to legal advice before and during it, and that right is worth exercising whatever you believe the strength of the allegation to be.

If you are facing charges anywhere in West Dunbartonshire, Stirlingshire, Argyll and Bute, or the surrounding courts, we act for people at every stage — from police station attendance through to trial in the Sheriff Court and High Court. Legal aid is available where you qualify, and we will tell you honestly at the outset whether you are likely to.

Call 01389 756785. We answer at whatever the time of day.

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This article is general information about the law in Scotland and is not legal advice on any individual case. The law described is correct as at the date of publication.