[catskul2]

Just to clarify, in the US at least, juries don't determine innocence, but rather "not guilty", aka, inefficient evidence of guilt.

From cornell law website:

> A not guilty verdict does not mean that the defendant truly is innocent but rather that for legal purposes they will be found not guilty because the prosecution did not meet the burden.

[alasdair_]

As an interesting quirk, Scottish law has three verdicts: "guilty", "not guilty" and "not proven" where the latter is basically "we think you're guilty but the prosecution sucked so we have to let you go"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_proven

This turned out to be a big deal because of the trial of the Lockerbie bombers who blew up a Pan-Am flight over Scotland and were ultimately tried under Scots law. There was a real possibility that the bombers could have gone free with a "not proven" verdict.

[giobox]

While its true Megrahi and co were tried under Scottish law, it wasn't in a court room in Scotland. There are a number of features of how the Megrahi case was tried by Scottish judges in an area of the Netherlands on a US airforce base that was legally declared part of Scotland that are unusual, it was a very unique process that has never been repeated:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Court_in_the_Netherla...

> https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/apr/07/lockerbie

There are aspects of how that trial unfolded that have long been subject of concern even from victims families (Dr Jim Swire famously); politically a "not proven" verdict would have been so unpalatable I'm honestly not sure how much chance there ever was of that occurring - politics is how we ended up in the bizarre Scottish courtroom in the Netherlands situation in the first place. Even the way in which the judges deliberated is not standard for a typical High Court of Justiciary case in its normal home in Scotland.

[phendrenad2]

This reminds me of video games where you can report players for "harassment", "cheating", and "low skill". "Low skill" reports go to /dev/null.

Moral of the story is: Sometimes you need to give people the button they really want to push, even if it does nothing.

[md_]

Of course. I should have said "acquitted", as opposed to a hung jury.