I realize this is strange (and the title isn’t helping matters) but I’ve never been wild about news reports that have someone pleading “innocent” to a crime.

It’s a technical point, but “innocent” is not a valid plea because it is not a valid finding — courts don’t exonerate so much as reject for a lack of evidence or an excess of doubt.

Of course, there’s a reason that a Yahoo! (AP) story that actually quotes Peterson as saying “I am not guilty” uses the word “Innocent” in its headline. That would be the AP Style Guide: “Use ‘innocent,’ rather than ‘not guilty,’ in describing a defendant’s plea or jury’s verdict, to guard against the word ‘not’ being dropped inadvertently.” (Courtesy some people who are as anal as I.)

But if there’s really a risk the “not” will be lost, what does that say about the press?

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2003 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Miscellany.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.