Innocent vs. Not Guilty
The local new station KOMO 4 (http://www.komotv.com) did an article on the regarding the the mall shooting suspect and his “innocent” plea. Anyways, I felt like ranting about the use of the term innocent\innocence as opposed to properly using not-guilty…
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Dear Komo News,
I was reading your article this morning on komo4news.com titled “Prosecutors May Upgrade Charges Against Mall Shooting Suspect” and I have a concern over that statement “He has pleaded innocent to assault, kidnapping and firearms charges”. My concern is your substitution of “not-guilty” for “innocent” as they have two different meanings…
First off the state of Washington there is no recognizable plea as innocent; there is guilty, not-guilty, and the Alford plea. You can not plea innocent because our law system already presumes innocence until a court of law determines a different verdict. Even a plea of not-guilty is by no means an exclamation of innocence; it’s not considered a testimony nor is considered lying under oath but rather a formality in our law system to demand a jury trial. Even during acquittals, the jury finds the defendant not-guilty, not innocent. This is because with the evidence and testimony provided relative to the charges they were unable to determine guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. For example a defendant may have been charged with first degree murder, in which it must be proved that a deliberate and unlawful act caused the death of another person. The defendant provides a defense that he killed the victim in self defense, and the jury ultimately finds him “not-guilty”. They are able to find him not-guilty of homicide because the state was unable to prove the defendant acted with premeditated malice aforethought, this by no means the defendant was innocent in the victim’s death.
Even the associated press revised it’s stylebook on the issue last year…
Old entry:
“Use innocent, rather than not guilty, in describing a defendant’s plea or a jury’s verdict, to guard against the word not being dropped inadvertently.”
New Entry:
“innocent, not guilty – In court cases, plea situations and trials, not guilty is preferable to innocent, because it is more precise legally. (However, special care must be taken to prevent omission of the word not.) When possible, say a defendant was acquitted of criminal charges.”
I guess my point is that we as society and especially the media be more careful to ensure words such as innocent\innocence are not misused. As you can see there is certainly a difference between not-guilty and innocent. Anyways, I’m through with my rant now… 
Cheers,
Carl Gibson
