Circumstantial Evidence is Sometimes Smoke without Fire
Circumstantial Evidence
Photo Credit: brainparking.com
There is a quote attributed to John F. Kennedy that I have always thought was relevant to many things in life: "Where there's smoke, there is usually a smoke-making machine." Circumstantial evidence is also like smoke. When we see smoke, we make an inference as to its possible cause.
Consider for example the photo above. One may make a number of inferences as to what happened on this corner:
- A few days ago when the ground was muddy, a car drove close to the curb and sprayed mud on a passing mother pushing her baby carriage.
- A graffito artist painted the wall to make it look like #1 above.
- During a circus parade an elephant turned perpendicular to the road and farshitted on a passing mother pushing her baby carriage.
- The municipal authorities, during a particularly creative fugue, painted that image on the wall to warn pedestrians that this corner is susceptible to sewer blockage and not to stand nearby during wet weather.
If I asked you to guess which answer was correct, you would freely give it without much hesitation. In a similar manner juries are asked to look at circumstantial evidence and guess if it points to the defendant as the murderer. There are no consequences to the jury members for guessing incorrectly.
But now let's change the consequences. Suppose I told you that if you guess incorrectly, you must forfeit your life. Would you take that guess now? No sane person would, unless they were actually there to witness that image being created. And that is why Jewish sages long ago demanded that a witness in a capital case had to have seen the entire crime as it was being committed; circumstantial evidence was inadmissible. In addition, bearing false witness in a capital case was in itself a crime punishable by death.
We should do likewise with juries: there must be consequences for taking guesses lightly. In my article The Solution to Capital Punishment, I wrote: "If a prosecutor brings a case to trial and opts to seek the death penalty instead of life-without-parole, and after conviction, if the accused is subsequently found to be innocent, then the prosecutor should be put to death.
There Must Be Consequences for Sending an Innocent to his Death
Likewise the jury should be given a choice after convicting someone of murder. Should he be executed or be given life-without-parole. If the jury decides on LWOP, then the judge thanks the jury and dismisses them. However, if they choose death (and it must be unanimous), then they must draw straws to see who among the jury will stand to be executed if the defendant is subsequently exonerated. If that should happen, then the selected scapegoat is arrested and immediately executed without trial, since he waived all trial and appeals.
Please don't whine about an innocent juror being executed. If you don't care about wrongly accused innocents, you cannot then pretend to care about innocent jurors.
If jurors are so cocksure that the defendant is the murderer then they won't have any problems sending him to death. If they have misgivings then they won't. The problem today is that many jurors may have misgivings but will still send someone to his death because there are no consequences if they're wrong. If they have to make a life-or-death decision for a stranger, then it should be a life-or-death decision for themselves.
Then I won't have a thing to say against the death penalty.
