Witness Evidence

[TheRocketSurgeon]

When the scientific evidence isn't available they're just kind of desperate to get at the truth basically.

But it is innocent until "proven" guilty and there's no proof in court because there isn't even any proof in science.

Sure letting a serious criminal go free would be horrible, but wrongly convicting an innocent person for several decades isn't exactly great either.

With respect, Evie, I think you have that backward. (But to your defense, so do our courts.)

Sure wrongly convicting an innocent person would be horrible, but letting a serious criminal go free isn't exactly great either.

A murderer who is not convicted is, to me, almost infinitely better than convicting an innocent person. 

It does bother me when those who are adoring of authority point to the courts as their example of, "See? This would be evidence in court!" I always refer them to Ambrose Bierce:

INADMISSIBLE, adj. 

Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay evidence. There is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law. It cannot be proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was such as person as Julius Caesar, such an empire as Assyria.

     But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.