If you have further questions about the rules of evidence and their role in a court case, you should speak to a criminal defense or assault lawyer in your area. Hearsay is one of the most important and complex areas of evidence in common law jurisdictions. The standard rule is that hearsay evidence is inadmissible. Hearsay is an amicable statement offered to prove the truth of the alleged case. A party offers an explanation to prove the truth of the alleged case if it attempts to prove that the claim of the declarant (the author of the out-of-court statement) is true. For example, Bob says before the trial, « Jane went to the store. » If the party presenting this statement as evidence in court tries to prove that Jane actually went to the store, testimony is offered to prove the truth of the alleged case. However, there are dozens of exceptions and exceptions to hearsay in common law and evidence codifications, such as the Federal Rules of Evidence. Procedures for obtaining disclosure of evidence prior to trial. The legal system that originated in England and is now used in the United States is based on the articulation of legal principles in a historical succession of judicial decisions. Common law principles can be changed by statute. Thayer (1898:266, 530) was influential in his view that the law of evidence has no say in logical relevance and that its main task is to deal with admissibility. If the evidence is logically irrelevant, it must be excluded for that reason. If the evidence is logically relevant, it will be received by the court, unless the law – in the form of an exclusion or admissibility rule – requires its exclusion.
In this system, the concept of relevance and the notion of admissibility differ: the rules of admissibility presuppose the relevance of the evidence to which they relate. A common example of distinguishing between direct and circumstantial evidence involves a person entering a building when it can rain. If the person says, « It`s raining outside, » that statement is direct evidence that it`s raining. If the person is wearing a wet umbrella and a wet raincoat, these observations indicate that it is raining outside. [10] Federal Rule 403 allows relevant evidence to be excluded « if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the risk of unjust bias, » if it is confusing in the questions, if it is misleading, or if it is a waste of time. Section 352 of the California Evidence Code also allows exclusion to avoid « a significant risk of undue hardship. » For example, the evidence that the victim of a car accident appeared to be a « liar, cheater, womanizer and man of low moral character » was unreasonably prejudicial and irrelevant to determining whether he had a valid product liability claim against the manufacturer of his van`s tires (which had overturned, resulting in severe brain damage). [3] One possible answer to the above challenge of probability relevance theory is to deny that it was ever conceived as an exclusive relevance test. The evidence is relevant when the probability ratio is not 1:1. But evidence may also be relevant for other reasons, such as when it provides a richer narrative or helps the court understand other evidence. For these reasons, witnesses are routinely allowed to give their names, and parties may present diagrams, diagrams and floor plans (so-called « demonstrative evidence ») at trial (McCormick 2013:995).
The admission of evidence in the scenario described by Allen above has been explained in the same way (Park et al. 2010:16). A panel of 16 to 23 citizens who listen to the evidence of criminal charges presented by the prosecutor`s office and determine whether there is a probable reason to believe that a person has committed a crime. See also Indictment and United States Prosecutor. In another epistemic interpretation, the evidence is sufficient to satisfy a standard of legal proof, and a determination of legal liability is permissible only if the factual intermediary can see the evidence of the defendant`s liability – specifically, the essential facts giving rise to such liability (Duff et al. 2007: 87-91; Pardo 2010; for a critical overview of knowledge-based accounts, see Gardiner forthcoming). A high probability of liability is not enough. For more subtle, knowledge-based theories, standards of proof are met only if, based on the available evidence, there is a sufficiently high probability that the investigator will know that the defendant is responsible (Littlejohn 2020 and 2021; Blome-Tillmann, 2017), or only if the belief in the defendant`s liability exceeds the relevant legal threshold and credibility represents knowledge (Moss, 2018). It is also argued that the relevant knowledge required to establish liability cannot be inferred solely from statistical evidence (Littlejohn, 2020 and 2021; Blome-Tillmann, 2017; Moss 2018 and soon). According to Thomson, this is because statistical evidence (to take our first example, 75% blue bus ownership) is not causally related to the fact to be proven and cannot guarantee the veracity of the relevant belief (that the bus that caused the accident was blue) (Thomson 1986). Another argument is that knowledge requires the exclusion of all relevant alternatives, and to take our prison scenario, there is no evidence to address the possibility that the accused was the one who did not participate in the attack, or the possibility that the defendant is less likely to be guilty than an arbitrary prisoner in the court. (See Moss forthcoming; Moos 2018: 213.
Gardiner 2019a adapts the framework of relevant alternatives to model standards of legal evidence in a non-mathematical way, while avoiding a knowledge report on these standards.) Another possible explanation for ignorance is based on the concept of sensitivity. The belief that the defendant is responsible is not sensitive to the truth if it is based on mere statistical evidence; In the example of the bus, the evidence of the market share of the buses remains the same, whether or not it is true that a blue bus caused the accident (cf.