Probable cause

“ Probable cause exists where 'the facts and circumstances within their (the officers') knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information (are) * * * sufficient in themselves to warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that' an offense has been or is being committed. ”

“ It appears from what has been said, that the assertion that a cause has been defeated of an effect which is connected with it by a completely ascertained law of causation, is to be disbelieved or not, according to the probability or improbability that there existed in the particular instance an adequate counteracting cause. ”

“ These acts are so numerous and come from so many different emotions and motives, that often the cause is obscure and the explanation not easy to find. Still here, as everywhere in Nature, nothing can happen without a cause, and even where limited knowledge does its best and cannot find causes, our recognition of the connection between cause and effect and the all-inclusiveness of law can leave no doubt that complete knowledge would bring complete understanding. ”

“ Now it appears to me that this assurance can not be obtained, when the cause assumed in the hypothesis is an unknown cause imagined solely to account for a. When we are only seeking to determine the precise law of a cause already ascertained, or to distinguish the particular agent which is in fact the cause, among several agents of the same kind, one or other of which it is already known to be, we may then obtain the negative instance. ”

“ All crimes, nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand, have a motive. True, these motives are often veiled and are not discernable at a mere glance. You must be a good diagnostician to handle these veiled cases—to diagnose them, as it were, as a learned physician diagnoses his case when called to the bedside of a very sick patient—find the cause. ”

“ The second part of the work turns upon the suspicion of a definite person when his own activity is interpolated as a cause of the crime. Under some conditions again, the effect of the crime on the criminal has to be examined, i.e., enrichment, deformation, emotional state, etc. ”

“ Cases may be pointed out in which something which could have no real effect but to make persons think of misfortune, was regarded not merely as a prognostic, but as something approaching to an actual cause of it. ”

“ It is difficult to believe, at any rate where physical laws are concerned, that the earlier part of the process which is the cause can make any difference to the effect, so long as the later part of the process which is the cause remains unchanged. Suppose, for example, that a man dies of arsenic poisoning, we say that his taking arsenic was the cause of death. ”

“ The conditions of every causation are multifarious as we look at them in a regressus of causes or a progressus of effects, and as the mind of the individual can make but one judgment at a time, it may be that the one of the causes or effects which is considered, is in fact a trivial element in the causation, for in all our language we are accustomed to speak of one of the causes as the special cause, for it must be the special one in consideration. ”

“ Experience informs us that one event has happened often; testimony informs us that another event has happened once or more. That diseases should be generally cured by the application of external causes, and sometimes at the mere word of a prophet, and without the visible application of causes, are facts not inconsistent with each other in the nature of things themselves, nor irreconcilable according to our ideas. Each fact may arise from its own proper cause; each may exist independently of the other; and each is known by its own proper proof, whether of sense or testimony. ”

“ Among the positive conditions, as we have seen that there are some to which, in common parlance, the term cause is more readily and frequently awarded, so there are others to which it is, in ordinary circumstances, refused. In most cases of causation a distinction is commonly drawn between something which acts, and some other thing which is acted upon; between an agent and a patient. ”

“ What we term "but-for" cause is the least rigorous standard that is consistent with the approach to causation our precedents describe. If a motive is not a but-for cause of an event, then by definition it did not make a difference to the outcome. ”

“ The mistake regularly made in such a case is the immediate and superficial search for the personality of the criminal instead of what should properly proceed—the study of the causal conditions of the crime. For the causal law does not say that everything which occurs, taken as a whole and in its elements, has one ground—that would be simply categorical emptiness. What is really required is an efficient and satisfying cause. ”

“ A reasonable doubt is a doubt for which you can give a reason. If you can conceive of any other hypothesis that will exclude the guilt of this prisoner and make it possible or probable that somebody else might have done this deed, then you have got a reasonable doubt in your mind. Now, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, I want to say a word about [202] the kind of evidence. There are two kinds of evidence, direct evidence and circumstantial evidence. Direct evidence is the testimony of persons who have seen, heard or felt the thing or things about which they are testifying. ”

“ And while a bad motive (malice) is seldom enough to give a cause of action, proof of its existence is a potent inducement to a jury to swell the assessment of damages, as evidence of bad character may induce them to reduce the damages to a derisory amount. ”

“ If the student had been able to show that he had been diligent in his efforts, had attended to business in a reasonable manner, and that his previous record had been satisfactory he would have established his argument that ill health was the cause of his failure. In every argument from effect to cause the adequacy of the alleged cause must first be shown and then evidence must be produced establishing the fact 212that no cause, other than the one alleged, produced the effect. ”

“ Fallacies of cause occur in every hour of waking life. We attribute effects to wrong causes. We are especially liable to this from the fact that both cause and effect are conditions, and causation is a change of condition from an antecedent to a consequent. ”

“ The student has therefore failed to prove his argument that poor health, which is a legitimate cause, is responsible for his failure. The evidence shows that general dissipation, which is not a legitimate cause, has intervened between the alleged cause and the effect. ”

“ He said:
'To treat proxima causa as the cause which is nearest in time is out of the question. Causes are spoken of as if they were as distinct from one another as beads in a row or links in a chain, but-if this metaphysical topic has to be referred to-it is not wholly so. The chain of causation is a handy expression, but the figure is inadequate. ”

“ Even in the case of a common cold, you will find that the reasons given for believing that this or that cause produced it, often will not bear a strict examination, according to the acknowledged rules of evidence. ”

“ As stated in the preceding section the alleged cause must have a clear field for action. Not only must no other cause have intervened to produce the effect attributed to the alleged cause, but no forces must have intervened to prevent the alleged cause from operating. Any circumstance which appears to have prevented the operation of the alleged cause should be examined carefully. One morning a man was found dead near the railroad. ”

“ Their impatience may be traced to a different cause—a suspicion, awakened at an early period of the trial, and which, during its progress, has been gradually growing stronger; until it has at length assumed almost the shape of a belief. ”

“ Every only half-confused case, the process of which is unknown, requires first of all and as early as possible the application of some assumption to its material. As soon as the account is inconsistent the assumption must be abandoned and a fresh one and yet again a fresh one assumed, until finally one holds its own and may be established as probable. ”

“ It has been truly argued that there is, and can be, no cause without an effect. In considering circumstantial evidence, the mind of the investigator is presented with the relation of a number of facts, or effects, and he is asked to deduce that they are all attributable to a stated cause. For example, a peddler is known to have started out upon a lonely road, and to have in his pack certain wares, a given amount of money in specified coins and bills, wearing a watch and chain, and he is subsequently found murdered, by the wayside. ”

“ If casual or irregular disturbing causes exist, we should probably require many such cycles of results to render their effect inappreciable. We obtain the desired result by taking the mean of all the367 observations in which a cause acts positively, and the mean of all in which it acts negatively. ”

“ The proximate cause is the efficient cause—the one that necessarily sets the other causes in operation. The causes that are merely accidental, or instruments of a superior or controlling agency, are not the proximate causes, and the responsible ones, though they may be nearest in time to the result. ”

“ The evidence must satisfy the jury that the party at the time of committing the act in question was insane, and that the disease is of such severity that the person is incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong in that particular case, or of controlling the sudden impulse of his own disordered mind ”

“ Then, if a new and quite different notion arises in us, the alteration of the observed material occurs as easily again, and only long afterwards, when the observation has hardened, do fresh alterations fail. This is a matter of daily experience, in our professional as well as in our ordinary affairs. We hear of a certain crime and consider the earliest data. For one reason or another we begin to suspect A as the criminal. The result of an examination of the premises is applied in each detail{34} to this proposition. ”

“ But the occurrence does not leave him with the word merely, there is a direct inference “B has tuberculosis.” We never begin anything with the word alone, we attach it immediately to some fact and in the present case it has become, as usual, a judgment. The thought-movement of him who has heard this judgment, however, turns backward and he supposes that the judge has had a long series of sense-perceptions from which he has derived his inference. And in fact he has had only one perception, the reliability of which is often questionable. ”

“ The piecing together of the loose bits of evidence which we hunt up, a bit here, a bit there, arguing upon it, drawing conclusions from it, rejecting what will not fit, filling up the empty spaces, until we present the whole case without a crack in it for a guilty man to slip through--that is what we call circumstantial evidence, and it is really a science, doctor. ”

“ So many incidental factors of physical, mental, and social life, with all of the complicated background of the same, come in to make the total result, that experiment and trial with the individual case, while hesitating to give an exact prognosis, is perhaps the only sane procedure. What we do know definitely is the immensely favorable outcome in Cases 1, 4, 7, 19, and the promising betterment in several other instances—all in direct contradiction to what we had expected from survey of previous literature. ”

“ For us lawyers chance and the interpretation of it are of immense importance not only in bringing together evidence, but in every case of suspicion, for the problem always arises whether a causal{160} relation may be established between the crime and the suspect, or whether the relation is only accidental. ”

“ Why, be I never so careful in my diagnosis or treatment, a chance deviation from my orders on the part of patient or attendant, a chance draught of wind, or upset nerves—oh, Lord, yes! as the Good Book says, ‘Time and Chance happeneth to us all.’ And no line of work is more precarious than establishing a theory or running down a clew in a murder case. ”

“ If disclosures of consequence are made, and the attendant should feel it his duty to look forward to the future judicial proceedings and to the probability of his appearing as a witness, he ought to remember the general rule is, that his account of what the patient told him is not evidence in the eye of the law, unless it was told under the consciousness of the approach of death. ”

“ That this exposition of the true cause of the popular errors, in regard to any supposed connexion between certain accidents of matter, and unconnected future events, will not be without its uses, must be evident from the known influence which some of the means of prognostication possess over every rank of society. ”

“ Any conclusion pro or con, deduced from supposed sensation in matter or from matter's supposed consciousness of health or disease, instead of reversing the testimony of the physical senses, confirms that testimony as legitimate and so leads to disease. ”

“ In truth we have only shown that the particular relations, in the matter of length, breadth, number of nails, etc., agree, and hence we regard the positive part of the evidence as sufficient and neglect the whole troublesome negative part, which might establish the fact that at the time and in the region in question, nobody was or could be whose foot could accurately fit that particular footprint. ”

“ Sometimes, as in others, suspects were brought, under judicial order, to view or touch the body. Frequently, however, the occurrence is spontaneous, and serves to excite or direct suspicion where none existed before. ”

“ The negative portion of the evidence will naturally be developed with less accuracy. The proof is limited to the assertion that such shoes as were indicated in the evidence were very rarely or never worn in that region, also that no native could have been present, that the form of the nails allowed inference of somebody from foreign regions, one of which might be the home of the suspect, etc. Such an examination shows that what we call evidence is only probability or possibility. ”