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What is evidence?
Dear Editor,
As young police recruits we were made to memorise the definition of many subjects; one of those subject was “EVIDENCE”.
We were taught that evidence is the term used to indicate the means by which any fact or point in issue or question may be proved or disprove in any manner, complying with the legal rules governing the subject. We were further taught that there are two types of evidence: Direct Evidence and Circumstantial Evidence.
Direct Evidence is said to be evidence that directly links a person to a crime, without the need of any inference, i.e. the person was seen committing the crime.
Is was also explained that Direct Evidence is a piece of evidence often in the form of the testimony of witnesses, the account of an eyewitness or a confession. Examples of direct evidence are when a person testifies that he/she saw an accused commit a crime, heard another person say a certain word or words, or confesses to committing the crime.
Circumstantial Evidence is said to be evidence that relies on an inference to connect to the conclusion of fact, such as fingerprint, DNA or other scientific evidence.
It is often said that a combination of circumstantial evidence, even though not as strong as direct evidence, is often enough to convict someone for a crime. The below was taken from Study.Com, which may give further clarity to the issue: In an ideal world, there would be a direct witness to all crimes who could testify to exactly what happened. This type of evidence is called direct evidence because it directly shows what happened. However, in the real world, lawyers are rarely that fortunate. In most cases, they rely on indirect evidence, which is just information surrounding the crime. This indirect evidence is also called circumstantial evidence. The circumstantial evidence definition states that it is evidence presented in a civil or criminal trial that suggest a fact is true rather than providing direct proof. All the pieces of circumstantial evidence are meant to lead the judge or jury to draw a conclusion about the case, and both prosecutors and defense attorneys use it to sway juries and judges.
Consider the following circumstantial evidence example. A group of men wearing masks robbed a bank, and now a suspected group of men are being prosecuted for the crime. Because their faces were covered, it is difficult to identify with certainty who was involved. However, if money with serial numbers matching that of the stolen money is found at one of their homes, this implies that they were involved in the robbery.
Additionally, they may have been heard bragging about being able to afford luxury items even though they work low-paying jobs, or perhaps witnesses may have seen a group of masked people fleeing from the bank and getting into a car that looks similar to one of the defendant’s car. Even more suspicious would be if fingerprints belonging to the defendants were found in the bank. Because all of the pieces of information are circumstantial, they fall short of absolute proof. Still, these many pieces of circumstantial evidence may be convincing enough to persuade a jury to convict the defendants of the robbery.
The take away is that you do not have to have direct evidence to convict a person for a crime, circumstantial evidence may suffice.
Regards,
Paul Slowe CCH, DSM, ACP (Ret’d)
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