Nicola Sturgeon has condemned the "shamefully low" conviction rates for rape and sexual assault as she pledged to look at whether Scotland should retain its controversial not proven verdict.
The First Minister, who trained as a lawyer at the University of Glasgow, revealed she had changed her mind on the issue.
It comes in the wake of calls to scrap the verdict – one of three available in trials in Scotland – by Rape Crisis Scotland.
The organisation launched a campaign in 2018 along with the woman known as Miss M, who successfully sued the man cleared of raping her for damages in the civil courts.
I have spoken with each political party throughout the #EndNotProven campaign.
I am continuing to have discussions as manifestos come out. We have the government research and we’ve heard the distress from survivors.
It’s time to do the right thing for Scotland’s future 🏴 https://t.co/b8ujqrpGsM
— MissM (@missmjustice) March 24, 2021
Scotland is the only part of the UK where juries can return three verdicts at the end of a trial – guilty, not guilty or not proven.
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has also said his party “fully committed” to abolishing the verdict.
READ MORE: 'Abuse of position': Women to make complaint to parliament after Salmond evidence leaks
Ms Sturgeon said: “I do think it is time to look at the not proven verdict.”
Recalling when she studied law at Glasgow University, she said it had been “imprinted on my brain” that the “three totemic things” that make Scots law distinctive were the not proven verdict, the need for corroboration in trials with evidence coming from more than one source, and that there are 15 people needed to make up a jury.
In the past she said “maybe I have had a bit of a lawyers’ view” of the not proven verdict.
But she added: “The conviction rate for rape and sexual assault is shamefully low. And I think there is mounting evidence and increasingly strong arguments that the not proven verdict is a part of that.
“So I think it is something that it is time to look at.”
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