Circumstantial Evidence
A New Law Dictionary and Glossary · Alexander M. Burrill · 1850
A New Law Dictionary and Glossary
Evidence derived from circumstances, as distinguished from direct and positive proof.* It IS also ca Ued [presumptive evidence, and the doctrine founded on it] the doctrine of presumptions, because where the fact itself cannot be proved, it may be presumed from the proof of such circumstances as either necessarily, or usually, attend such facts.
3 £1. Cam. 371.
3 Siepk, Com. 614, 616, and note. See Presumptive Evidence, The term presumptive is frequently used as synonymous with circumstantial evidence, but it is not so used with strict accuracy.
Wills an Circumst Evid. 26. Greenl, an Evid. § 13.
According to Mr. Wills, circumstantial and presumptive evidence differ as genus and species. Wills an Evid, ub, sup. See Presumptive Evidence, The ffreat peculiarity of circumstantial evidence IS its indirect character, it being made to bear upon the principal fact in question, (the factum probandum,) though other and minor or collateral facts; a fact of this last kind being distinguished ss factum probans. See Factum probandum, Mr. Wills, indeed, considers circumstantial evidence to be of a nature identically the same with direct evidence, and what he observes in confirmation of this position is undoubtedly true, that cu to the minor facts themselves, the evidence by which they are to be established must be direct in its nature; but it is certainly not the less true that as to the principal fact, this same evidence is wholly indirect. The following distinctions made by Mr. Best, in his treatise on Presumptions of law and fact, may serve to illustrate more fully the nature of circumstantial evidence. When the existence of any fact is attested by witnesses, as having come under the cogmzance of their senses, or is stated in documents, the genuineness and veracity of which there seems no reason to question, the evidence of that fact is said to be direct or positive. When, on the contrary, the existence of the principal fact is only inferred from one or more circumstances which have been established directly, the evidence [of such principal fact] is said to be circumstanticU, And when the existence of the principal fact does not follow from the evidentiary facts as a necessary consequence of the law of nature, but is deduced from them by a pro* cess of probable reasoning, the evidence and proof are said to be presumptive.
Best an Presumptions, 246. Id. 12. See Greenleafon Evidence, § 13.
CIRCUMSTANTIBUS Tales de.