Rationale of Judicial Evidence - 1827 Author:Jeremy Bentham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Sect. II. — Informative facts applicable to Real Evidence. The evidentiary (i. e. the criminative or in- culpative) facts belonging to this class being in so ... more »prodigious adegree multifarious; in a correspondent degree multifarious must be the facts that apply to them respectively in the character of infirmative facts. Yet, except in so far as the connexion between the principal fact and the evidentiary fact is necessary, there is not one such evidentiary fact but must have its correspondent infirmative facts, by the possibility of which its probative force is diminished. Not that facts are altogether wanting, which (the evidentiary facts being by the nature of the principal fact so many criminative or in- culpative facts) are applicable in common to all evidentiary facts belonging to the class of real evidence. Of the infirmative facts of this description, five examples may be designated as follows, viz. 1. Accident. The appearance unquestionable, but not having for its cause any agency of the supposed delinquent, directed to the production of the forbidden result in question : being produced either by causes purely physical, or (if with the intervention of any human agent acting in pursuit of any end) produced either by some other person, or by himself in pursuit of some unforbidden end. 2. Self-exculpative forgery in relation to real evidence, (viz. the evidence composed of theappearances in question), committed by some other person, guilty either in respect of the offence in question or some other offence. See, further on, forgery in relation to Real Evidence. '3. Like forgery committed by some other person, who—though not guilty in respect of the offence indicated by the real evidence in question in its genuine state—yet, under the apprehension of the indic...« less