Binnie was clear in the report - compensation was not his decision to make. He supplied footnotes to underpin his findings: "This reflects the fact that my job is to recommend not decide."
But he was not shy about offering his opinion. In his follow up email to Collins, he stated "it is surely the case that an incompetent and one sided investigation by the police will lead forseeably and consequentially to a heightened risk of conviction".
"In my view this is what happened here."
In this case, everyone has an opinion over whether Bain did it or not. It was a point underlined by Collins' early advice to Binnie that he should drop his report off on the way to the airport. Instead, the judicial insight and might of Binnie has narrowed to the investigation which led to police laying charges.
Our Governments have never capably handled harsh judgments against our police. And, it must be said, such claims of incompetence should not be casually made. Law and order in our society is underpinned by faith and trust in the police and the way they do their job. Almost exclusively, they do it well. We should be proud of what they do.
But when they don't do it well, those who run the police and the ministers who sit over them struggle to respond.
It is an extraordinary 32 years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the conviction of Arthur Thomas found the police had planted evidence. In this case, too, it was a judge from another jurisdiction who led the inquiry. The police faced criticism then, too, and have never moved to accept the failings identified.
The opportunity is here, again, to confront the occasional crushing failings which will bedevil any police force. Ignoring them invites repetition, and reduces the faith and trust the police need to do their critically important job.
I have interviewed members of both juries - those in 1995 who convicted Bain and put him away for 13 years and those in 2009 who set him free. They were 12 ordinary men and women. The overwhelming impression left from talking to those on the second jury was their anger and simple upset over the conduct of the police force.
They had always considered the police above reproach. They found they were wrong.