![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The frequent addition ‘so help me God’ was in fact a tacit admission that the whole truth and nothing but the truth were impossible goals for human control. No single person can know the whole truth of any event, and no witness however honest can be sure that their testimony contains nothing but the truth. the old oath demanding that witnesses swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, was impossible of realisation. Legal systems in our archipelago have evolved in part by reliance on legal fictions, e.g. The notion that a verdict of ‘NOT PROVEN’ never proves the best verdict is obviously impossible to prove. The most that can be claimed against it is that verdicts of ‘GUILTY’ or ‘NOT GUILTY’ might in certain circumstances be more likely correct than ‘NOT PROVEN’ but even there time might alter the balance in the direction of ‘NOT PROVEN’, new data emerging under scrutiny or old data being accorded more weight than hitherto. The case against ‘NOT PROVEN’ is ‘NOT PROVEN’ and can never be anything else. To the incumbent minister, Keith Brown MSP: The Proposal that the ancient Scottish verdict of NOT PROVEN be abolished is now open for Conversation under Scottish Government auspices, on which Owen Dudley Edwards FRSE, FRHistS writes ![]()
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