Testimonial evidence

“ TO determine exactly the credibility of a witness, and the force of evidence, is an important point in every good legislation. Every man of common sense, that is, every one whose ideas have some connexion with each other, and whose sensations are conformable to those of other men, may be a witness ”

“ Every lawyer knows how lightly the evidence of a non-mi-recordo witness is esteemed. The testimony of false witnesses will not be uniform in its texture, but will be unequal, unnatural, and inconsistent. ”

“ The witness who knowingly perverts the truth, often betrays his mendicity by his voice, his countenance, or his choice of words; while the unconscious perverter gives his testimony with all the force of sincerity. Let the witness who intends to give evidence worthy of confidence, be on his guard against the temptations to become a partisan. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The witness who gives evidence merely from memory, and not from the knowledge of the case then present to his mind, may tell a straight story, but one not so straight will often better secure belief. The skilful lawyer can generally detect in the perfection of the story the vice of the evidence. ”

“ But if facts are shown, by evidence other than the confession, demonstrating that the confession is not a fantasy warped by the aberration or weakness of the accused, then the finder of fact may properly attribute the confession to the familiar motivation of an accused person who realizes that he has been caught and may as well tell the truth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The testimony of an expert is without doubt the most dangerous kind of evidence when not supported by additional testimony; but, on the other hand, if the known facts fit in well, it is the strongest kind of testimony that can be submitted, and is usually known as "opinioned evidence." ”

“ Were not these, I say, discovered by experience to be qualities, inherent in human nature, we should never repose the least confidence in human testimony. A man delirious, or noted for falsehood and villany, has no manner of authority with us.
And as the evidence, derived from witnesses and human testimony, is founded on past experience, so it varies with the experience, and is regarded either as a proof or a probability, according as the conjunction between any particular kind of report and any kind of object has been found to be constant or variable. ”

“ An account of an extraordinary occurrence given by an honest witness is, of course, generally preferable to a statement of the same occurrence merely obtained from hearsay; and the evidence of the witness deserves all the greater attention if he shows himself to be an intelligent and keen observer. ”

“ You are still young, and when you have had more experience you will know that it is only the evidence of living witnesses that can be received in a court of justice. Proceed with your case and confine yourself to relevant evidence—yes, sir, relevant evidence. ”

“ There is no man who tells a long and complicated story, like that which you have heard, who may, and must not of necessity, be confirmed in many parts of it. The witness was upwards of eight hours in giving his evidence, and of course stated many facts, which no man denies, which have been in all the newspapers for weeks and for months past; and because he is confirmed in certain particulars, you are therefore required to believe the whole of his story to be true. ”

“ Are they worthy of implicit belief, in the matters which they relate? This is the question, in all human tribunals, in regard to persons testifying before them; and we propose to test the veracity of these witnesses, by the same rules and means which are there employed. 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. It is still the evidence of matters of fact, capable of being seen and known [pg 003] and related, as well by one man as by another. ”

“ Well, gentlemen, the evidence of circumstances is just as good as any other evidence, and very often it is far more reliable and far less subject to be vitiated by improper influences than ocular and oral testimony. ”

“ Direct evidence is testimony that is a statement of what the witness himself has seen, heard, or perceived by the evidence of any one of his own five senses, [A] which testimony is directly given by a witness, to lead to the facts in issue, that is, the facts required to be proved in order to make out or to constitute the criminal case, or the civil cause of action, sought to be established, according to some rule of Law. ”

“ Yet they rested their conclusions upon the same abiding principle of evidence, the primary axiom of our entire social life—that there is a degree of human evidence which practically cannot deceive. "If we receive the witness of men." ”

“ All other evidence consists of statements, coming from we know not whom, at we know not what times, on we know not what occasion, each of them with we know not how many reporting witnesses, one after and from another, through so many different and successive channels, between the percipient witness or witnesses, and the last reporting witness or witnesses, from whom the historian received the statement in the way of personal intercourse. ”

“ The fourth test of the source of evidence is:—
(4) Does the witness have a good reputation for honesty and accuracy?
The human conscience is so constituted that many people deviate from the truth for no apparent reason whatever. Some are given to exaggeration; some habitually pretend to know that of which they are entirely ignorant; others are so inaccurate that everything they say is open to grave suspicion. If a witness is known to have been repeatedly dishonest or inaccurate in the past, little reliance should be placed in his testimony. ”

“ In common affairs, where nothing is asserted but what is probable, and possible, according to the usual course of nature, a reasonable degree of evidence ought to determine every man: for the very probability, or possibility of the thing, is an support to the evidence; and in such cases we have no doubt but a man's senses qualify him to be a witness. ”

“ It happens comparatively seldom that untrue confessions are discovered, but once this does occur, and the trouble is taken to subject the given evidence to a critical comparison, the manner of adaptation of the evidence to the confession may easily be discovered. ”

“ Remember, however, that the value of evidence is in this ratio: that direct evidence of a witness who knows of his own knowledge and observation in the particular case is more to be trusted than expert evidence based on general observation, and that both are worth more than that evidence which is the result of deduction and inference.
Qualifications of Witnesses.—In weighing the value of the testimony offered to prove your facts—testimony is those statements of the witness which make up his evidence—you must ask him certain questions. ”

“ All the persons—and there are many of them living—upon whose separate evidence some parts, and upon whose united testimony others, of this most singular recital depend, are, in their several walks of life, respectable, and such as would in any matter of judicial investigation be deemed wholly unexceptionable witnesses. ”

“ Many an expert has made a poor exhibition in the witness-box by failing to convey to a jury the impression produced on his own mind by a slight piece of evidence, the proper understanding and interpretation of which can only be grasped by those who have learned how to recognize faint signs. ”

“ When twelve of these professors are put in a box, it is called a jury. When one of these professors is put in a box by himself, he is called a witness. The retailing of evidence—the observation of the facts—is given over to people who go through their lives without eyes; the appreciation of evidence—the judging of these facts—is surrendered to people who may possibly be adepts in weighing out pounds of sugar. ”

“ At least you must admit, Monsieur Thomas, that your method possesses one disadvantage: when you read the written account of his evidence to the witness, he can hardly understand it, since you have introduced into it terms he is not accustomed to employ and the sense of which escapes him. ”

“ At the time of judging, the witnesses are not brought to the bar for examination, as is the practice in England, but the confrontation and recollement are produced as evidence. You are to understand that each witness has been separately examined, without knowing what any other has said; therefore it is an excellent plan for eliciting the truth. It is all important, you will perceive, for the accused to be on the alert, so that if there is any false statement made by a witness it may be discovered. ”

“ Therefore, in dealing with subjects which have undeniably been made the means of deceit and delusion thousands of times to one authentic instance, it is not well to accept testimony, or any kind of evidence, or proof, save that which we can establish for ourself. The day is not yet, but it is coming, when self-evidence will be claimed, and granted, as to all human knowledge, and the sooner it comes the better will it be for the world. ”

“ The evidence of these facts and phenomena is to be found scattered up and down the pages of writers of every age, creed and country. On hardly any subject have men of such different degrees of learning, such various and opposite prejudices, left us their testimony—testimony from the nature of the subject more than ordinarily liable to be affected by prejudice, and by the limitations of each witness's powers of observation and opportunities of ascertaining the truth. ”

“ The first author who stated fairly the connexion between the evidence of testimony and the evidence of experience, was Hume, in his Essay on Miracles; a work abounding in maxims of great use in the conduct of life.—Edinburgh Review, Sept. ”

“ The custom of permitting a witness to wander at will over the entire field of knowledge, hearsay, surmise and opinion has several distinct advantages over our practice. In giving hearsay evidence, for example, he may suggest a new and important witness of whom the counsel for the other side would not otherwise have heard, and who can then be brought into court. ”

“ Where several witnesses testify to the same transaction, no matter how honest they may be, they will disagree upon minor matters, and such testimony is generally considered as evidence that the witnesses have not conspired among themselves. The differences in statement are accounted for from the facts that all do not see alike, and that all have not equally good memories ”

“ If the witness knows what evidence the judge wishes to bring out, and that the lash will be applied until such evidence is forthcoming, it is ten to one that he will say what is desired, irrespective of the facts. ”

“ The difficulty is, when testimonies contradict common experience, and the reports of history and witnesses clash with the ordinary course of nature, or with one another; there it is, where diligence, attention, and exactness are required, to form a right judgment, and to proportion the assent to the different evidence and probability of the thing: which rises and falls, according as those two foundations of credibility, viz. ”

“ An expert witness when giving evidence may refer to notes for the purpose of refreshing his memory, but only if the notes were taken by him at the time when the observations were made, or as soon after as practicable. ”

“ In truth, the degree of excellence and of strength to which testimony may arise seems almost indefinite. There is hardly any cogency which it is not capable by possible supposition of attaining. The endless multiplication of witnesses,—the unbounded variety of their habits of thinking, their prejudices, their interests,—afford the means of conceiving the force of their testimony, augmented ad infinitum, because these circumstances afford the means of diminishing indefinitely the chances of their being mistaken, all misled, or all combining to deceive us. ”

“ There are many more satisfactory tests of the truth of parol testimony than that of character of the witnesses. Where the facts sworn to are capable of contradiction, they may be proved by others not to be true; and when they are not, the internal evidence is often more convincing than any other. A shrewd witness, who is swearing falsely to something which cannot be disproved by direct testimony, will confine his recollection wholly to that single fact, professing a want of recollection of all the facts and circumstances attending it. ”

“ Our second proposition, and which now remains to be treated of, is, That there is NOT satisfactory evidence, that persons pretending to be original witnesses of any other similar miracles have acted in the same manner, in attestation of the accounts which they delivered, and solely in consequence of their belief of the truth of those accounts. ”