Online Reporter
Trust Maanda
Legal Position
IN order to prove an accused person guilty, there must be some evidence that links that person to the commission of the offence.
Evidence can be direct or indirect.
Indirect evidence is what is referred to as circumstantial evidence. A person can be convicted purely on circumstantial evidence alone.
Circumstantial evidence is indirect evidence from which an inference of guilty may be drawn.
This is done when the State fails to place real and direct evidence before a court of law in criminal matters.
Circumstantial evidence is evidence from which a conclusion of fact is made from analysis of all the circumstances that surround the case.
For example, an old woman disappears and a hyena is found vomiting grey hair. The villagers who missed the old woman may believe that the grey hair is of the missing woman, and therefore conclude that it is the hyena which devoured the old woman.
Basically, all the pieces of evidence put together must paint one unmistakeable picture leading to one irresistible and inescapable conclusion.
This type of evidence is as good as direct evidence, but is fraught with pitfalls. The law therefore has provided safeguards in place to avoid wrong and misguided convictions on the basis of circumstantial evidence.
The circumstances from which an inference of guilty is sought to be drawn are all established. The inference of guilty must be consistent with all the proved facts and exclude every reasonable inference from them except that accused is guilty.
The circumstances taken cumulatively must form a chain so complete that the conclusion is inescapable that all probabilities point to the commission of the offence by accused and no-one else.
The circumstantial evidence must be incapable of explanation by any other hypothesis than that of guilty of the accused, and such evidence should, not only be consistent with the guilty of accused, but also inconsistent with his innocence.
The landmark case that is considered the most authoritative in explaining circumstantial evidence, is R v Blom 1939 AD where WATERMEYER JA, referring to two cardinal rules of logic governing the use of circumstantial evidence in a criminal trial, stated: “1. The inference sought to be drawn must be consistent with all the proved facts. If it is not, then the inference cannot be drawn.
“2. The proved facts should be such that they exclude every reasonable inference from them, save the one to be drawn. If they do not exclude every reasonable inferences, then there must be a doubt whether the inference sought to be drawn is correct.”
The long and short of it is that circumstantial evidence can only be used to draw an inference if the inference sought to be drawn is the only reasonable one which can be drawn from those facts. It must rational and be supported by an analysis of the proved facts.
Coming to the story of the missing old woman and the hyena, the conclusion that the hair in the hyena’s vomit is of the missing woman has to exclude other reasonable inferences that can be drawn.
A trier of fact must ask himself: “Was there no other substance that the hyena might have eaten that resembles grey hair? Could the old woman have been taken away or wandered off, and is alive somewhere, while the hyena may have eaten some greyish material like grey hair, could the hyena have eaten the vomit of another hyena that had eaten the old woman?”
If there are other possibilities of what could have happened to the woman and what could have been eaten by the hyena, then there can be no inescapable conclusion that the hyena ate the old woman.
Circumstantial evidence should always be narrowly examined, because evidence of this kind may be wrongly construed.
Before drawing the inference of the accused’s guilty from circumstantial evidence, it is necessary to ensure that there are no other co-existing circumstances which would destroy the inference.
With circumstantial evidence, the inference sought to be drawn must not permit other reasonable inferences.
The inference must be the only one that can be drawn from the facts and must be consistent with the proven facts and it must flow naturally, reasonably, and logically from the facts.
The evidence must exclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, every reasonable hypothesis of innocence.
If a reasonable hypothesis exists from the proven facts which are consistent with the accused’s innocence, the court must find the accused not guilty.
In drawing inferences, the court must take into account the evidence as a whole, and must not consider the evidence on a piecemeal basis.
If you were the lawyer for the hyena which is accused of eating a missing old woman, because it was found vomiting grey hair, what would you say in order to destroy the inference of its guilty on the basis of circumstantial evidence?
TRUST MAANDA is a legal practitioner and a partner at Maunga Maanda And Associates. He writes in his personal capacity. He can be contacted on +263772432646
