Evidence to Convict?

[Ravenshire]

RR should already know my opinions on testimony, but for those who didn't follow our mostly civil discussion of the topic, I'll state them here. Testimony is fine as evidence, as long as it is corroborative in nature to the physical evidence. Testimony alone should never be sufficient to convict anyone of a serious crime, especially crimes where long stretches in prison or even capital punishment are the possible sentences. Too many innocent people have received convictions when they did not commit the crime for which they are charged.

So, would I be correct in assuming that, if no empirical evidence is found, collecting testimony would then be somewhat of a waste of time because its function, to corroborate the actual physical evidence, cannot be performed in the absence of said evidence?

I don't think prosecutors should stop collecting evidence of any type until they achieve a conviction or they determine that no conviction is possible. You never know when one of the witnesses may come forward with video evidence of the crime that came from, let's say a security camera that they didn't, at the time of questioning, think was even turned on, let alone recording. At that point, even if the video doesn't clearly show the perpetrator, there is now real, physical evidence for the testimony to support. If you stopped collecting, or worse, didn't bother to collect, testimony because of a lack of physical evidence, your case is kinda screwed. Especially if the video isn't clear. On the other hand, I don't think RR's little fairy tale of a violent bodily crime being committed without any physical evidence is at all plausible, especially with the tools forensics teams have available today.