My local newspaper, The Courier and Advertiser, has reported this week of a case at the High Court in Dundee in which a young woman admitted stabbing her partner during a struggle with a kitchen knife and causing his death.

Ms Kerri Hutcheson was charged with the murder of a man whom her defence counsel, Mr Mark Stewart KC, revealed had a long history of domestic abuse and also police assault.

Ms Hutcheson’s position was that she had acted in self-defence. The jury subsequently returned a verdict of ‘not proven’.

I have followed with interest the debate in Scottish Legal News over the proposed scrapping of the ‘Scottish verdict’ principally, it would appear, in order to secure more convictions in rape cases.

Sir Walter Scott famously described ‘not proven’ as ‘that bastard verdict’, after this week’s case perhaps some of its critics may reflect that the ‘bastard verdict’ is not such a bastard after all.

Alexander Knox
Arbroath