Extrinsic evidence

“ When we come now to consider how we establish facts, whether single or complex, we find that, both to aid our own judgment and to convince other people, we rely on evidence. We have seen that evidence falls roughly into two classes: either it comes from persons who testify out of their own observation and experience, or it comes indirectly through reasoning from facts and principles already established or granted. ”

“ Disagreeing widely on other and far less important departments, all schools, and languages, and ages—writers on law, on logic, on science—agree in accepting what is called the evidence of the senses, although, as we have seen, the senses of themselves can give us no evidence of anything whatsoever; and in this, likewise, there is passive if not active agreement—that the first qualification of a witness is honesty, and that the concurrence of testimony of large numbers is a solid basis for belief. ”

“ Belief in a fact vouched for by circumstantial evidence, rests on experience that such circumstances as are ascertained to exist in the case, never exist unaccompanied by the given fact. What we call evidence, whether complete or incomplete, always consists of facts or events tending to convince us that some ascertained general truths or laws of nature must have proved false, if the conclusion which the evidence points to is not true. ”

“ Who is afraid of the statement of facts? Or do our friends on the prosecution feel that our scientists merely state opinions, and give no evidence of facts? But if this is to be an investigation facts are necessary. If this is to be an investigation, your honor, as a lawyer, knows it is necessary to properly introduce that evidence. ”

“ As we extend our scrutiny into the evidence from direct observation, we find still other proofs independent of those just considered. One proof alone, be it remembered, is all that is required, but it will be found that there are many. ”

“ All these causes make it extremely difficult to arrive at what we should call truth as regards matters of fact—appearances alleged to have been seen, feats performed, or the occurrence of past events; and though there may be no prejudice against the possibility of them, it is wise—in cases where definite and unmistakable evidence is absent, to withhold the judgment either way, for or against their occurrence. ”

“ The alterations in the minds of men, which the tendency of modern thought has effected in respect of evidence, may be summed up under two heads: First, the nature of the evidence required is altogether altered, and a great many arguments, that would in former days have gone to the jury, are now summarily suppressed. Fact can only be proved by facts, that is, by events, instances, things, which are submitted to experience and observation, and are confirmed by experiment and reason. ”

“ Yet, so crude is as yet the comprehension of the science of evidence, that every feature of the phenomenon under investigation is made equally important, and sought to be linked with the chain of evidence. To attempt to explain everything is always the mark of the tyro. ”

“ But if some one saw the student obtaining aid, that fact would be direct evidence against him.
Direct evidence, as a rule, is considered more valuable than indirect, but each kind is frequently sufficient to induce belief. The best possible kind of evidence, the kind that is least liable to contain error or falsehood, is a combination of both direct and indirect. Either one by itself may be untrustworthy. ”

“ But, once separated, it is manifest that the internal evidence drawn from the works themselves, however satisfactory as to the one question, is utterly incompetent as to the other, and that it is by purely external—that is to say, by circumstantial evidence, by history, and by the record—that the question before us must be answered, if, indeed, it ever is to be answered at all. ”

“ A proposition of fact is proved, when its truth is established by competent and satisfactory evidence. By competent evidence, is meant such as the nature of the [pg 022] thing to be proved requires; and by satisfactory evidence, is meant that amount of proof, which ordinarily satisfies an unprejudiced mind, beyond any reasonable doubt. ”

“ They are accustomed to look only for one species of evidence; a species of evidence of which the transactions of life do not admit. When they come from certainties to probabilities, from a syllogism to a witness, their superiority is at an end. ”

“ The laws of evidence are too well understood to call for abstract reasoning as to the credibility of the witnesses who are at present giving their testimony to the scientific world, of the successful repetition of an operation hitherto believed to be impossible. ”

“ Whatever degree of veracity we may be disposed to attribute to early history, we must at least admit that the implements have this advantage over written testimony of any kind, that they cannot intentionally mislead us. If we draw wrong inferences from them, the fault is our own. We shall find the evidence very fragmentary as yet, but sufficient to prove that it affords a valuable source of information whenever sufficient materials [174] are collected to enable us to work out the problem to its legitimate ends. ”

“ If those whose business it is to judge are not at one as to the authenticity of the only evidence of that kind which is offered, nor as to the facts to which it bears witness, the discussion of such evidence is superfluous. ”

“ If a close examination of the evidences of Christianity may be expected of one class of men more than another, it would seem incumbent on us, who make the law of evidence one of our peculiar studies. Our profession leads us to explore the mazes of falsehood, to detect its artifices, to pierce its thickest veils, to follow and expose its sophistries, to compare the statements of different witnesses with severity, to discover truth and separate it from error. ”

“ Skilled in the law yourself, thoroughly familiar, with the rules of evidence, it's more than possible that you might have reviewed matters and decided that there were things which, if they were known, would do harm instead of good—obscure the truth, perhaps ”

“ We must apply these principles of evidence with great care, and observe that in a great proportion of cases the adducing of a weak argument does tend to the disproof of its conclusion. The assertion may have in itself great inherent improbability as being opposed to other evidence or to the supposed law of nature, and every reasoner may be assumed to be dealing plainly, and putting forward the whole force of evidence which he possesses in its favour. ”

“ It seems, then, a piece of alarmist exaggeration to say that if we admit one thing, e.g. the Uniformity of Nature, without evidence, we forfeit the right ever again to ask for evidence for any other statement: on the contrary, whenever evidence can be got, we must get it and abide by it. ”

“ The evidence in behalf of government by law, which has of late years been offered by science, is received by many of them with suspicion, perhaps with dislike; sentiments which, however, must eventually give way before the hourly-increasing weight of evidence. ”

“ What will first strike you is, that that is an hypothesis which, whether true or false, is not capable of verification by evidence; for, in order to secure testimony to an eternity of duration, you must have an eternity of witnesses or an infinity of circumstances, and neither of these is attainable. It is utterly impossible that such evidence should be carried beyond a certain point of time, and all that could be said at most should be that there was nothing to contradict the hypothesis. ”

“ They are inferences from inferences; presumptions resting on the basis of another presumption. Such a mode of arriving at a conclusion of fact is generally, if not universally, inadmissible. No inference of fact or of law is reliable drawn from premises which are uncertain. Whenever circumstantial evidence is relied upon to prove a fact, the circumstances must be proved, and not themselves presumed. ”

“ Moreover, if we notice false observations and let them by, then, under certain circumstance, we are minus one important piece of evidence pro and con, and the whole case may be turned topsy turvy. At the very least a basis of development in the presentation of evidence is so excluded. ”

“ The examination and cross-examination of the witnesses are carried on under rules of evidence which are the result of centuries of experience, and which give many a man as he sits on a jury his first lesson in the fallibility of the unobserved and uncontrolled inferences of the human brain. The 'said I's,' and 'thought I's,' and 'said he's,' which are the material of his ordinary reasoning, are here banished on the ground that they are 'not evidence,' and witnesses are compelled to give a simple account of their remembered sensations of sight and hearing. ”

“ It is true, that “no understanding, created or uncreated, can see evidence where there is none”; but what kind of evidence that is, by which all things are rendered perfectly clear to the eye of Omniscience, it is surely not for us to determine. ”

“ Evidence.+—We may reach belief in the truth of a specific statement by means of deductive reasoning. Commonly, however, when dealing with an actual state or occurrence, we present other facts or circumstances that show its existence. The facts presented may be those of experience, the testimony of witnesses, the opinion of those considered as experts in the subject, or a combination of circumstances known to have existed. To be of any value as arguments, they must be true, and they must be related to the fact that we are trying to prove. These true and pertinent facts we term evidence. ”

“ The evidence, in full civilisation, ancient and modern, of educated and even sceptical witnesses to phenomena, which are usually grotesque, but are always the same everywhere, in every age and land, and the constant attendance of these phenomena on persons of a peculiar temperament, are our stumbling-blocks on the path to absolute negation. ”

“ If one starts to travel around the logical circle in one direction, one can keep revolving indefinitely and find ever fresh supporting evidence. If, however, one begins to revolve around the same circle of opinion in the opposite direction, it is just as easy and just as compelling to continue to think in this fashion and to find all testimony corroborative. ”

“ In far the greater number of crimes the proof must depend to a large extent upon the evidence of circumstances. But these must be so convincing that it is impossible in reason to draw any other conclusion from them. ”

“ Each supposed fact must be sifted out and weighed. The evidence must be gone over again and yet again, each link in its chain being scrupulously tested. The deduction to which the evidence may seem to point must be closely and impartially scrutinized, every other conceivable explanation of the facts being frankly and fully considered. ”

“ The being and existence of the thing itself, is what I call the original truth. A credible man vouching his knowledge of it is a good proof; but if another equally credible do witness it from his report, the testimony is weaker: and a third that attests the hearsay of an hearsay is yet less considerable. So that in traditional truths, each remove weakens the force of the proof: and the more hands the tradition has successively passed through, the less strength and evidence does it receive from them. ”

“ Although data can only be criticised by other data, not by an outside standard, yet we may distinguish different grades of certainty in the different kinds of common knowledge which we enumerated just now. What does not go beyond our own personal sensible acquaintance must be for us the most certain: the “evidence of the senses” is proverbially the least open to question. What depends on testimony, like the facts of history and geography which are learnt from books, has varying degrees of certainty according to the nature and extent of the testimony. ”

“ The inferiority of evidence, however, which attaches to this class of laws, is trifling, compared with that which is inherent in uniformities not known to be laws of causation at all. So long as these are unresolved, we can not tell on how many collocations, as well as laws, their truth may be dependent; we can never, therefore, extend them with any confidence to cases in which we have not assured ourselves, by trial, that the necessary collocation of causes, whatever it may be, exists. ”

“ The other approach made by reason to see whether a theory is true or false is the experimental one, that of positive evidence. You test, by the positive evidence at your disposal, whether the thing affirmed has really taken place or not. ”

“ When we remember the enormous importance of oral evidence in the chain of criminal proof, and the rough traditional empiricism of the criteria of credibility, which are daily applied in all trials to all kinds of witnesses, by men who regard them, like the prisoners, as an average abstract type—excluding only the definite cases of inability to give evidence, which are defined beforehand with as much method as the cases of irresponsibility— the necessity of calling in the aid of scientific psychology and psycho-pathology is manifest. ”

“ In striking harmony with this most reasonable conclusion is the well-known postulate of Jeremy Bentham, who gave so much thought to the Law of Evidence: “Evidence is the basis of justice: to exclude evidence is to exclude justice.” ”