GENERALLY RELIABLE

Taranaki Daily News, 26 April 1930, Page 16

GENERALLY RELIABLE

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE.

THE ONLY ALTERNATIVE.

A defence of circumstantial evidence, or circumstantial method, was contained in an address given by Mr. 11. F. Johnston, K.C., of Wellington, in an address at the pnnual conference of the New Zealand Law Society on Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Johnston said it was only by the circumstantial method that trials as conducted in the Englishspeaking countries could be carried on. “Knowing well the value of circumstantial evidence, we should guard against any modern tendency of thought or action which may rob it of its value,” he said. In cases where public opinion was disturbed at a finding of guilty founded mainly on circumstantial evidence and petitions for reprieve were circulated, lawyers could do good service by examining not only the inferences made but the direct evidence, and especially by directing their minds to the tendency to force facts to form parts of one connected whole. Such examinations seemed necessary because the public, generally speaking, were good judges, and if they considered a verdict wrong it was likely, although they might express their criticism wrongly, that the attack was properly made. Circumstantial evidence must, theoretically speaking, bo loss trustworthy than direct evidence, said Mr. Johnston, but in practice it yielded proof as satisfactory as direct. The alternative to the circumstantial method was a swing to the continental method with its intolerable intimidation, to procure direct evidence which no one itt this country desired.