Why is it that when a jury acquits someone of a crime, it uses the phrase “not guilty” — rather than, say, “innocent”? The answer is fundamental to the understanding of due process in America. It’s central to understanding where the burden lies. It is the key to understanding the report of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Trump and his camarilla.

“While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” Attorney General Barr quotes Mr. Mueller as writing. This is being met with excitement among the Democrats. Speaker Pelosi suggests that Congress needs urgently to look at the full Mueller report because “on a charge as serious as obstruction” the report fails to exonerate the president.

Yet of course Mr. Mueller failed to exonerate the president. No one can exonerate him. Nor would anyone, in a normal — or abnormal — criminal case, ever be expected to exonerate a person who has been accused or is merely suspected. Neither, though, is it necessary for President Trump, or anyone else in this case, to be “exonerated.” That’s because, in America, the burden is solely on the prosecution.

It is our principle that no man, no woman, no child, no matter their circumstances, no person suspected, or accused, of a crime can be required to prove his innocence. No matter the crime, no one needs to prove his innocence. He is presumed innocent. The burden of proof is solely, one hundred percent, completely, entirely — and without exception, even if the president is involved — on the accuser.

Forgive the redundancies above, but we just seek to nail that point. It is an essence of due process in America. On top of it is the additional fact that President Trump was never, in the formal, judicial sense, accused of a crime. What just happened in respect of Mr. Trump is that the special prosecutor couldn’t even adduce enough evidence to make an accusation.

It’s hard, sadly, to imagine that this is going to satisfy the Democrats. They demanded a special prosecutor in the first place. In disbelief at that same Special Prosecutor’s failure to levy charges, the Democrats are going frantically to seek Mr. Mueller’s full report, including underlying documents and testimony. They are going to go through all that madly in hopes of finding something Mr. Mueller overlooked.

They are going to attack the integrity of Attorney General Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and, conceivably, Mr. Mueller himself. They are going to drive themselves clinically crazy over the Special Prosecutor’s statement that he did not exonerate the President of America of obstruction — when neither the Special Prosecutor nor anyone else ever had to hoist that burden in the first place.