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...convicted, and to prosecutors being too willing to use the new law for a ‘second bite of the cherry’. However, these stringent safeguards seem to have prevented that from happening. And importantly, the new rules allow guilty people to be brought to justice, providing closure to victims or their families. Take your learning further Like law? Check out these courses......

...courses. After years of consultations and reports, the Scottish government is proposing to conduct a pilot to test out running rape trials with just a judge – and no jury. The conviction rate in Scotland for rape and attempted rate is woefully low. Only 51% of trials lead to a conviction, which is simply not acceptable in a modern justice system. Reform is clearly...

...courses. [A group of people engaged in a debate.] When the Scottish Government announced in 2015 that it had accepted a recommendation to commission research into the Scottish jury, an observer might have wondered why this was even necessary. In 2012, Dennis J Devine estimated that there had been 1500 jury research studies carried out by 2011. Is there really anything new...

...courses. People are often poor eyewitnesses. Psychologists have been demonstrating this in experiments for years, but the justice system in the UK has been slow to catch on. There have been improvements, but lawyers and judges continue to rely regularly on eyewitnesses to convict or exonerate people accused of crimes – in some cases, they might argue they have little...

...courses. Twenty-six years ago, 19-year-old Scots drama student Amanda Duffy was murdered after a night out with friends. In a landmark trial in 1992, there was only one suspect in the case, Francis Auld. Despite forensic evidence that could link Auld to Amanda’s death, he received a “not proven” verdict, which meant the jury deemed there was insufficient evidence to...