Rule of evidence

“ In other words, the court will seek the aid of opinion evidence only where the issues involved or facts are of such a complex nature that the man of ordinary understanding is not competent or qualified to form an opinion, but, if the court please, even this exception is limited by the rule of law to which I shall refer later in my argument, that prohibits in any event the introduction of expert testimony upon the very facts that the jury are to pass upon. ”

“ And as we are denied the Liberty of giving Evidence, to prove the Truth of what we have published, I will beg Leave to lay it down as a Standing Rule in such Cases, That the suppressing of Evidence ought always to be taken for the strongest Evidence ”

“ The best evidence must be given of which the nature of the thing is capable. (3) Hearsay evidence of a fact is not admissible. The principal exceptions to this rule are—death-bed declarations, evidence in questions of pedigree, public right, custom boundaries, declarations against interest, declarations which accompany the facts or are part of the res gestæ, &c. (4) Insane persons and idiots are incompetent to be witnesses. But persons temporarily insane are in their lucid intervals received as witnesses. ”

“ The rule of common sense is primâ facie to trust a witness in all matters, in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor that love of the marvellous, which is inherent to a greater or less degree in all mankind, are strongly concerned; and, when they are involved, to require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified. ”

“ Where they have made explicit findings of fact, those findings conclude us and form the basis of our review-with the one caveat, necessarily, that we are not to be bound by findings wholly lacking support in evidence. ”

“ The issue, which, it has been shown, is subsequent to the record, and can only mean delivery, is treated as the thing to be proved; all the matters of record are but instruments of evidence to establish the fact of issue. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After all the evidence is collected from every quarter, then it is the proper business of the understanding or judgment to compare and balance evidence, and to form a decisive opinion or belief, according to apparent truth. We have no more right to judge without evidence than we have to judge contrary to evidence; and we have no more right to doubt without, or contrary to, evidence, than we have to believe without, or contrary to, evidence. We have no right to keep ourselves in a state of doubt or uncertainty, when we have sufficient evidence to come to a decision. ”

“ No one has ever contended that the proof should be exclusively that of eye-witnesses, testifying from their senses positively and directly to the fact. Political, like other offences, may be established by circumstantial as well as positive evidence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Legislation declaring that proof of one fact of group of facts shall constitute prima facie evidence of an ultimate fact in issue is valid if there is a rational connection between what is proved and what is to be inferred. ”

“ The second is, that whatever fact has to be proved, should be proved by the best evidence, by the actual document alleged, or by the man who has seen with his own eyes or heard with his own ears the things or the words asserted to have occurred. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the court below neglects or refuses to make a finding one way or the other as to the existence of a material fact, which has been established by uncontradicted evidence, or if it finds such a fact when not supported by any evidence whatever, and an exception be taken, the question may be brought up for review in that particular. ”

“ Thirdly, a sound and calm judgment, which will subject all inferences and generalisations, both one’s own and other people’s, to a searching review, and weigh in delicate scales their validity. These two last-mentioned qualifications taken together make up what we call the critical faculty, i.e. the power of dealing with evidence as tending to establish or discredit statements of fact, and those general conclusions which are built on the grouping of facts. Neither acuteness alone nor the judicial balance alone is enough to make the critic. ”

“ Simply stated, it is whether the evidence is such that, without weighing the credibility of the witnesses or otherwise considering the weight of the evidence, there can be but one conclusion as to the verdict that reasonable men could have reached. ”

“ Was the court wrong in refusing to give this instruction?
Presumptions, from evidence given in a cause of the existence of particular facts, are in many, if not in all cases, mixed questions of law and fact. ”

“ But this result must be drawn from a general view of the whole, and will collect in one the sum of proof both probable and certain.
Again, where many various causes concur, some more and some less, to produce a certain effect, the force of such effect is the force of all these causes put together, not of each by itself alone. Or where many witnesses are examined, whose evidence differs in value, although the testimony of some be in itself decisive, yet the verdict must be given after a consideration and review of all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why should twelve men, totally untrained in the examination of legal questions or evidence, be expected to agree, in the face of a mass of contradictory evidence, and after listening for hours, or even days and weeks, to the arguments of counsel skilled in making the worse appear the better reasoning, and without a scrap of written or printed testimony before them? ”

“ 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 for ordinary minds, and not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed. They have their source very often in considerations of administrative convenience, of practical expediency, and not in rules of logic. When the risk of confusion is so great as to upset the balance of advantage, the evidence goes out. Thayer, Preliminary Treatise on the Law of Evidence, 266, 516; Wigmore, Evidence, §§ 1421, 1422, 1714. ”

“ That is done in the court below, when the particular fact is found which the evidence tends to prove. The effect of mere evidence stops when the fact it proves is established. After that the question is as to the effect of the fact; and when the evidence in a case has performed its part and brought out all the facts that have been proved, these facts thus established are to be grouped, and their legal effect as a whole determined. ”

“ While they cannot act in any case upon particular facts material to its disposition resting in their private knowledge, but should be governed by the evidence adduced, they may-and, to act intelligently, they must-judge of the weight of the force of that evidence by their own general knowledge of the subject of inquiry. ”

“ The word, however, comes ultimately from the law, where it is used for the testimony, either oral or written or material, which is brought in to establish the truth of assertions about fact: evidence is set before the jury, which under the common law decides questions of fact. In almost any argument of policy, however, we use facts as reasons for or against the policy which is in question, and therefore inmost cases we must use evidence to establish these facts; in many cases, when the facts are established there is no further disagreement about the policy. ”

“ With respect to all facts, legally operative, that is, which give or take away rights, it is desirable that evidence, amounting to proof, should, if possible, always exist. With respect to a great proportion of them, it is in the power of the legislature to take measures, that evidence of them shall be collected at the moment of their happening, and shall be preserved. ”

“ The importance of the facts testified, and their relations to the affairs of the soul, and the life to come, can make no difference in the principles or the mode of weighing the evidence. ”

“ No doubt it is often difficult to draw the line between a mere recital of the evidence produced in the case, and a finding of the facts which that evidence establishes; and where the statement certified by the Court of Claims is reasonably sufficient, we hope we shall not be found captious. ”

“ On this occasion they are to judge of fact as well as law. He must bring his witnesses where he is not known, where a new evidence may be brought against him, of which he never heard before, and which he cannot contradict. ”

“ In reasoning upon such subjects, when the facts which constitute the chain of circumstantial evidence are very numerous, we are apt to regard their greater comparative number as if it dispensed with a rigid application of the rules of determination. Every one can see, in the illustration above employed, borrowed from criminal jurisprudence, that the facts which constitute the chain of circumstantial evidence ought to be rigidly tested by the rules of determination before the guilt of the accused can be safely drawn as a deduction from the facts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The facts or data in the particular case upon which an expert bases an opinion or inference may be those perceived by or made known to the expert at or before the hearing. If of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field in forming opinions or inferences upon the subject, the facts or data need not be admissible in evidence. ”

“ New actions have been brought on the ground of newly discovered evidence; counsel have summed up the testimony from all lands, from whole libraries and literatures, and the great jury of mankind have uniformly rendered a verdict of no cause of action. ”

“ It is unnecessary to travel through the evidence, to a great extent contradictory, in order to vindicate our views concerning it. It would serve no useful purpose to do so, and we shall content ourselves with applying the law to a state of facts which we consider the evidence establishes, without any attempt to discuss it. ”

“ If, upon an examination of the record, it is found that as a matter of law the evidence is not sufficient to sustain the essential findings of fact, the judgment will be reversed. C. M. & St. P. Ry. Co. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The rules of evidence were put to the rack, to admit bits of letters and conversations, written and uttered by others than the accused, and to hold them responsible for all that had been said and done by every man who, at any time and anywhere, had belonged to the societies, or taken part in their discussions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All the exceptions that were argued in the court below or here relate only to questions of fact, depending on the weight of evidence. The court omitted to find the facts, and the case comes here on the evidence. ”