by zjurhgvc » Mon May 22, 2006 8:18 pm
Below is something to help cut through the misinfo. Pertinent also to other discussions on this board, and to Jeff's column today. Waiting from Fitz, waiting for Sibyl, waiting for Rita, waiting for Willy--we are meant to think that somehow words carry weight. What carries weight is forensic evidence, hence the importance of examining physical evidence and the circumstances of the crimes of 9-11. Somebody saying something (e.g. Mineta), a tip of the slongue, this doesn't do much. Unfortunately, the critical forensic evidence, and the crime scenes overall, were so tampered with as to make ex post facto investigations nearly impossible. This was the intent. The same thing happened with JFK and all the rest, didn;t it?<br><br>From <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>The Dictionary of Misinformation</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> (Tom Burnham), Thomas Y. Crowell, NY, 1975:<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>circumstantial evidence</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->. Few legal concepts are more widely misunderstood than "circumstantial evidence," which is commonly taken to mean suspicion without proof. As a matter of fact, all evidence except that given by witnesses is "circumstantial." Without it, no legal system could possibly work. And, as a matter of fact, erroneous convictions are much more likely to result from false testimony than from false inferences, as Bergen Evans reminds us in <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>The Natural History of Nonsense</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> (196<!--EZCODE EMOTICON START 8) --><img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"><!--EZCODE EMOTICON END--> .<br><br>There can really be only two kinds of evidence: that resulting from personal observation either by witnesses or victims, and circumstantial. That witnesses are only too frequently unreliable has been established so often that it belabors the point to emphasize it. And, since in the Anglo-American legal tradition the accused is considered innocent until proven guilty, in the absence of a confession a conviction must be secured either on the basis of testimony--as said, only too often unreliable--or circumstances. The murderer who is caught with smoking gun or bloody knife bending over a dying victim <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>must </em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->be convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence.<br><br>As a matter of fact, even confession is not enough for conviction; there has to be something to confess to (that is, a "circumstance"); and as only too often reported in the newspapers, any major murder case is likely to inspire a rash of false confessions by the unstable or publicity-seeking--or both. The evidence provided by circumstance remains, on the whole, the best of all, the most useful, and the least likely to result in an unjust conviction. <p></p><i></i>
