I can hear him now claiming he was 'exonerated', not acquitted. Big difference but most non-lawyers can't tell the difference. As Mr Person. I believe he was in a bar once.
*appears in a flash*
"Exonerated" is a bit ambiguous. It can happen in a number of ways. How it happens should guide how we judge it.
It
almost always starts when some guy's third lawyer or whatever takes the client's claim of innocence seriously, digs long and hard, and ultimately comes up with evidence either proving that the guy didn't do it or that someone else very likely did. It can be DNA, it can be witnesses recanting, it can be leads not followed. It's usually a blend.
From there, the prosecutors decide whether to fight the attempt to clear the guy's name - usually via motion for new trial with all the new evidence and analysis of its effect on the way the case played out in court - and usually do fight it. But there are some good eggs out there that see it for what it is, and conceded. What it really means ultimately depends on the details. If a new DNA analysis excludes the defendant, it means that they did not contribute whatever the DNA is. That may not even be the end of it. There are cases where prosecutors argue that sure, that DNA came from someone else, but the guy still might have done it (and we're not going to try to explain where that DNA came from because we can't, but we'll throw up some BS rationalization). Sometimes it's a straight confession from someone else, the real perp. That carries various degrees of weight, depending on the circumstances.
But here's the bottom line: if the result is dismissal of charges with prejudice (and unless I'm losing my mind it usually is), it means you are permanently off the hook. You are in effect declared innocent. I've just wasted words explaining the mechanism, and what you might think about when judging just how much you personally want to trust the reason for the exoneration.
(Don't trust wiki on this. It opens with "Exoneration occurs when the conviction for a crime is reversed, either through demonstration of innocence, a flaw in the conviction, or otherwise." False through generality. If a conviction is reversed because of "a flaw in the conviction" you get a new trial, unless the flaw was a double-jeopardy violation or egregious prosecutorial misconduct so bad that the courts dismiss it with prejudice (ie, forever).
As you note, acquitted is a bit different: jury refused to convict. The finding means proof beyond a reasonable doubt was not presented in their view. Now, a lot of fuss is made (by prosecutors, unsurprisingly) about how hard it is to provide that proof. It's not. Just about everything in the system is stacked against defendants. Hence a 98% or so guilty plea rate. Plus a lot are guilty anyway. Cases go to trial because (1) they're close, or (2) the defendant insists on his constitutional right, even if the idiot left his ID at the scene and made a videotape of him doing the crime.
I rather wish it carried more wait in a public, non-legal sense. But you can certainly be acquitted despite there being an awful lot of evidence against you. Maybe there just wasn't enough for that particular jury on one particular element of the offense. I still want to see that treated as innocence no matter what you think of the case (cough cough Simpson cough cough). You were put through the legal system. You were acquitted. You should not be treated as guilty, for better or worse, even if you were
obviously guilty to the public.
Rights matter.
Either way, nothing like "exoneration" has happened in this fiasco
other than Mueller finding on
criminal conspiracy. He most certainly was not exonerated of obstruction, though I'd bet the statute of limitations on federal obstruction of justice make it quite difficult to get an indictment in time were he to not win. I'd have to double-check. The main SOL is 5 years federally, but it's not universal.
And the Ukraine stuff is up in the air, though he will no doubt be acquitted in the senate (with no proof beyond a reasonable doubt standard, but merely a vote-count standard).
