means the state of being free from guilt, wrongdoing, or corrupting knowledge — moral purity, or simple legal blamelessness.

from From Latin innocentia, 'harmlessness, blamelessness,' built from in- ('not') plus nocere ('to harm') — the same root that gives us 'noxious' and 'innocuous.' So at its core the innocent are literally the un-harming, those who do no injury. It reached English through Old French in the medieval period, carrying both senses we still hold: free of guilt, and untouched by the knowledge that does the harming.