{"id":345681,"date":"2026-01-01T02:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T02:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/345681\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T02:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T02:31:08","slug":"we-fought-for-33-years-to-abolish-not-proven-verdict-after-our-daughters-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/345681\/","title":{"rendered":"We fought for 33 years to abolish not proven verdict after our daughter&#8217;s murder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Joe said that throughout the case the police and prosecution had assured the couple that they had a very strong case and expected to get a guilty verdict.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;So when it was not proven, you were like, what exactly does that mean? There&#8217;s something wrong here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was the fear of knowing that the person who was responsible, in my eyes, was still out there and capable of doing it again,&#8221; said Kate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A common interpretation of not proven was that the jury suspected the accused was guilty, but felt the prosecution had failed to prove the charge beyond reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Good luck finding that in a law book. As Joe and Kate were to discover, there was no written legal definition of not proven.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Over the years, whenever juries asked, all judges could tell them was that it was a verdict of acquittal, just like not guilty.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Research has also shown that some people thought &#8211; incorrectly &#8211; that the accused could be tried again if the verdict was not proven.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That has been allowed in exceptional circumstances since 2011 under double jeopardy legislation, but the method of acquittal plays no part in that process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe said that throughout the case the police and prosecution had assured the couple that they had a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-345681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}