I dnn't ever remember, even from the labyrinthine American court system, a verdict of "innocent" being handed down. Assuming that I'm right, does this mean that the courts, 10 times out of 10, fail to find that the defendant was completely innocent and shouldn't even have been charged?
Here, as far as I'm aware, we only have "guilty" and "not guilty". Whether or not innocent's a legal term I have no idea. Hang on, I'll ask my legally qualified spouse ... no it's not. Usually in NZ courts, if it becomes clear that the defendant couldn't have committed the crime the judge stops the trial and throws the case out. Since most judges appear to value their jobs, they clearly don't do this very often. Usually the trial proceeds to its bitter end, and either "guilty" or "not guilty" is handed down as a verdict. And "not guilty" can mean either "not proven" as in the Scottish system, or "innocent".
So the legalistic definition of "not guilty" is applied equally to those who really are innocent and those who have a better lawyer than the prosecutor but have committed the crime.
Seems to me, then, that the reporters are reasonably justified in using "not guilty" and "innocent" interchangeably if only because there will always be doubt about the exact, non-legal, meaning of "not guilty" when it's applied to a particular defendant in a particular case.
Well, that's my tuppence worth, anyway.
