Definition
The past tense and adjectival form of "acquit." A person is acquitted when a court or jury has formally determined that the criminal charges brought against them have not been proven, resulting in a judgment of not guilty. The acquitted person is thereby discharged from liability on those charges and cannot be retried for the same offense under double jeopardy protections.
Although acquitted appears most often in criminal contexts, historical usage extended to civil proceedings and debt obligations — a person could be acquitted of a civil claim or released from a debt. Modern usage has narrowed sharply toward the criminal sense.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Simple past tense and past participle of "acquit."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To acquit meant to set free or discharge; to release from an obligation, duty, or charge; to clear of a criminal charge.
The common and legal meanings are close, but the gap worth noting is directional: in ordinary speech, "acquitted" is often used loosely to suggest exoneration or vindication — that the person was innocent. Legally, acquitted means only that the prosecution failed to meet its burden of proof. It is a procedural outcome, not a factual declaration of innocence. A jury may acquit for reasons entirely unrelated to actual innocence.
Common Confusion
Acquitted vs. Exonerated: Acquitted means the prosecution did not prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Exonerated carries the stronger meaning — that the person has been affirmatively cleared, often through post-conviction proceedings or new evidence establishing actual innocence. Many legal systems and commentators use these interchangeably in casual speech; researchers should be alert to the distinction, particularly in post-conviction and wrongful conviction literature.
Acquitted vs. Dismissed: A dismissal terminates charges without a trial verdict. Whether a dismissal carries the same double jeopardy bar as an acquittal depends on the stage and grounds of dismissal. Historical sources sometimes conflate the two. An acquittal follows a factual determination (by judge or jury); a dismissal may not.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter "acquitted" in both its narrow modern criminal sense and its broader historical civil sense. Black's Law Dictionary explicitly preserved the civil application — "includes both civil and criminal prosecutions" — a usage that has largely fallen out of contemporary practice. Sources predating the twentieth century may use acquitted to describe the resolution of debt obligations, surety releases, or civil actions. Reading acquitted as exclusively criminal in pre-twentieth century documents risks misunderstanding the legal outcome described.
The double jeopardy dimension is critical for constitutional research. Once a defendant is acquitted, re-prosecution for the same offense is barred regardless of whether the acquittal was correct, well-reasoned, or even the result of jury nullification. This asymmetry — prosecution cannot appeal an acquittal on the merits — distinguishes acquitted from other dispositions and is a recurring point in Fifth Amendment and procedural due process literature across the Law Mind corpus.
Researchers working with jury records, trial transcripts, or criminal registers should also note that acquitted was sometimes recorded in abbreviated form (acq., acqt.) in historical court records, particularly English and early American materials. Misreading these abbreviations has caused errors in historical case reconstruction.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) define acquitted identically in substance: "Released; absolved; purged of an accusation; judicially discharged from accusation; released from debt." The language is notably broader than the modern criminal-only conception, explicitly encompassing debt release and civil proceedings. Both editions cite Dolloway v. Turrill, 26 Wend. (N.Y.) 383, 399, anchoring the definition in a real New York case.
Bouvier's Law Dictionary declines to define acquitted as a standalone entry and redirects entirely to ACQUITTAL — a practical editorial choice that signals the term functions primarily as the adjectival/participial form of that operative legal concept. Researchers looking for doctrinal depth in historical sources should follow Bouvier's lead and pursue the acquittal entry rather than the acquitted form.
No significant divergence exists among the historical dictionaries on core meaning. What the historical sources miss is the constitutional overlay — particularly the Fifth Amendment's double jeopardy clause and its categorical bar on re-prosecution after acquittal — which developed more fully through twentieth-century Supreme Court doctrine than these reference works captured.
Jurisdictional Note
Double jeopardy protection following acquittal is a federal constitutional guarantee binding all U.S. jurisdictions. International variation is substantial: some civil law systems permit appeals of acquittals on the merits, and England modified its double jeopardy rule by statute in 2003 to permit retrial after acquittal in serious cases where compelling new evidence emerges. Researchers working in comparative or international criminal law should not assume the American rule is universal.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See: ACQUITTAL; DOUBLE JEOPARDY; VERDICT