BBC Breakfast star Charlie Stayt has announced “terrible” news as a guest admitted, “I didn’t see a future”. During Thursday’s (January 1) live progamme, Charlie and his co-host Luxmy Gopal updated viewers on the latest news from across the UK and around the world.
They were joined in the studio by studio by Carol Kirkwood, who delivered regular weather updates, while John Watson presented the sports segment, and Emma Vardy shared updates on the energy price cap.
Later in the show, Charlie revealed that this year will mark one of the biggest modern changes to Scotland’s criminal justice system with the scrapping of the not proven verdict. Alongside that, a majority on a jury will no longer be enough for a conviction.
A pre-recorded clip was then played, in which a rape victim said: “I think the not proven verdict left me confused, it left me angry. Everyone thought I was going to return to the person I was before and just go back and do my university exams a few weeks later, but for me, I didn’t see a future. There was no ending, no closure.”
While some people are delighted by the removal of the not proven verdict, others have expressed their concern that an important safeguard has been lost. “I think it’s a terrible thing,” defence lawyer Thomas Leonard Ross KC said.
