Acquittal

An acquittal is the criminal judgment by which the court establishes that the defendant cannot be convicted of the offence for which the prosecution has brought charges. Under Danish law, the decision is a direct result of the criminal evidentiary assessment and follows from the rules of the Danish Administration of Justice Act (retsplejeloven) on the outcome of a judgment.

The fundamental condition for acquittal is that the prosecution has not discharged the burden of proving the defendant's guilt. Danish criminal law requires that guilt be proven beyond reasonable doubt — if the court cannot reach that degree of certainty, an acquittal must be rendered. This reflects the basic criminal law principle that any doubt must benefit the defendant.

Acquittal may also occur on procedural or substantive grounds lying outside the question of guilt itself. This applies, for example, where criminal liability is time-barred, where the required public prosecution is lacking, or where other conditions for conducting the criminal case are not met. In such cases, the acquittal is not necessarily an expression of the court having taken a position on whether the defendant actually committed the act in question.

Acquittal is not an independent criminal law category in the Penal Code (straffeloven), but a procedural outcome governed by the Administration of Justice Act. The Act provides that a judgment must result either in conviction or acquittal, and that acquittal must follow when the defendant is not found guilty. The decision is thus binary — the court cannot merely declare doubt or refrain from taking a position.

An acquitting judgment is in principle binding and cannot be reversed through reopening to the detriment of the acquitted person, unless particular conditions are met. An acquittal means that the defendant is released immediately if he or she has been held in pre-trial detention during the case.