Testimony is Evidence

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yes, and it is context of those who say that testimony is not evidence, or testimony is so weak as to require physical evidence to go with it.  This shows that this is untrue in current U.S. Judicial proceedings.

Well, it's a good then I never made that point, now isn't it?

I should think it would have been clear from my first post here that I wasn't commenting on the legal value of testimonial, but rather, the epistemological.

Yes, and as I have said from the beginning, testimony being evidence, doesn't mean that we do not examine it, test it, and question it at all.  I agree, that some testimony can be rubbish, either because of it's content (or lack thereof), or because you have reasons to discount it.

Indeed. And the more questionable the claim of the original testimony, the more solid must be the supporting evidence, no?

And this is a point, that I would like to hear the reasoning behind.  I don't think that you have the information that testimony has never overturned a conviction based on physical evidence.  I think that this is an assumption on your part.

I've never heard of such a case, and I follow the news regularly. The only cases I've heard of have been reopened as a result of physical evidence and then supplemented by a confession from the actual criminal. However, using the search term "conviction overturned on testimony" only returns hits that recount overturnings that were based on false testimony. While it is an assumption on my part, it seems that there are no notable cases involving convictions overturned on the basis of new testimony. Even if you're right in implying that my assumption is mistaken, it still seems to be the case that any such overturning is so rare that they're very difficult to find -- and with that one must accept that the probative value of testimony is considered by courts to be considerably less than that of physical evidence.