Report Sample on Five Traditional Types of Evidence

Introduction

Due to the prevalent crime cases and other forms of injustices witnessed in the world, it is necessary to be well informed of your rights as a civil citizen. This is in the exemption of being conversant with the entire legal resources. In fact, having the capacity to comprehend legal provisions and jargon is way better. Nobody can predict when their rights could be at stake due to criminal charges. As such, the paper is enshrined at discussing the various forms of traditional evidence while attributing examples in each case. Criminal law entails the body of laws that identify criminal offenses, regulate apprehension, charging, and trial of suspected victims. The laws also fix punishments and other modes of treatment for inmates convicted of an offense. It is through criminal laws that organized societies protect the security of personal interests and ensures the harmonious survival of the group. Traditional evidence of a violation of justice is incorporated within the provisions of criminal laws. In this regard, crime is traditionally regarded as an act morally unacceptable and evokes punitive punishment. In modern times, more rational and practical views have dominated. Traditional evidence necessitates the application of criminal laws within legal institutions in the contemporary world. Traditional evidence is based on the types of evidence noted herein.

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Demonstrative Evidence

Demonstrative evidence refers to the category of evidence explaining the testimony given by a witness to a crime. The type of evidence is associated with an object or a collection of objects used to interpret or prove the truth of an event, ownership, or action. The type of evidence is represented through illustrations of diagrams such as maps, animations, videotapes, and other similar methods (Baier et al., 2018). For example, when George Floyd was killed by the police in the United States, the CC TV footage of the scene of the event proved reliable as a source of demonstrative evidence. Demonstrative evidence is purely used to enhance oral testimony.

The Relevance of Demonstrative Evidence

Throughout the trial, a jury is tasked to comprehend and process all the information conveyed by both the attorneys and the witnesses. Plainly hearing this information without any physical lead may lead to forgetfulness when the time to pass judgment arrives. As a result, it has been a norm in the trial world to employ the usage of evidence so that juries pair aids with facts throughout a trial. Lawyers are afforded the ability to exercise the usage of substantive demonstrative evidence throughout their presentation and submissions of their verdict on a case (Baier et al., 2018). The ideology is to simplify information and make it more memorable. Demonstrations equally accord the jury a chance to experience the issues and facts surrounding a case in the eyes of the presenting party. The main purpose of demonstrative evidence is to inculcate a case belief theory on the jury.

The Short Coming of Demonstrative Evidence

While making decisions to incorporate demonstrative evidence within the perimeters of a court, lawyers must be very careful to ensure that the potential benefits override the potential harms. There is the possibility of immense potential benefits as well as immense potential harms. In addition, the lawyer reserves the discretion to judge the prejudicial demonstrative evidence as well as the admissible ones. This, in effect, opens the usage of demonstrative evidence as an issue of appeal (Baier et al., 2018). Erroneous usage of demonstrative evidence is open to culminate widespread, persistent problem. Complexity in definition and instructions on the use of demonstrative evidence is the cause of these complications. Deficits of uniformity within legal systems augment the problem even more as the judge owns the decision patterning to ways in which demonstrative evidence can be used. The end result is an inconsistent case result within the court system. The application of demonstrative evidence is compromised when a crime is perpetrated in an environment without a witness or technological systems to capture such activities.

The Admissibility of Demonstrative Evidence

Demonstrative evidence is not admissible by default. The rules of presenting substantive evidence before the court are equally applicable when presenting demonstrative evidence. None the less, the trial judge reserves all discretions on issues of admissibility. The requirements include outlining the relevancy of facts surrounding a case and a fundamental foundation to present evidence once they are considered relevant (Baier et al., 2018). The testimony denoted from the demonstrative evidence is enough to popularize its relevance. However, at this stage, the judge has the jurisdiction to stop the acceptability of the demonstrative evidence, especially when not convinced.

Real Evidence

Real evidence describes physical evidence associated with an object of any kind present in a case or used to execute a crime. Real evidence can include a gun, knife, a cloth stained with blood, money marked by anti-theft coloring, or any other relevant items. As such, the object employed to perform a criminal activity act as an exhibit. For instance, a doctor’s report from a victim raped is real integral evidence to put a casualty to justice. Real evidence is usually admitted as it tends to prove or disapprove an issue of fact in a trial. In order to be used in the trial, real evidence should be a relevant, authentic object. The process where a lawyer establishes the basic principles of real evidence is termed as laying the foundations. The witness who set up the item's chain of custody initiates the process.

Testimonial Evidence

Testimonial evidence refers to written or spoken evidence provided by a witness. Legal institutions treat this kind of evidence as to the simplest type of evidence. The reason behind such a description is pegged on the nature of its presentation. The typology only requires documentation or a witness’ appearance in court to gain legitimacy. A statement made in the course of a court hearing ultimately affects the outcome of the ruling (Imwinkelried et al., 2016). For instance, when there is a war over wealth or estate, company inheritance, a will serves the purpose as testimonial evidence. Also, when an individual continually denies before the court as the perpetrator of a crime, then a witness becomes the ruling determinant.

Documentary Evidence

Documentary evidence discusses substantive evidence that guarantees the documentation of the issue being addressed during the trial. Documentary evidence presented in courts proves or disapproves allegations of interest at trial. For instance, should the trial involve a breach of contract then, the documentary evidence would involve the actual contract that was breached. Such evidence is applicable in the field of business, where insurance companies engage in insurance policies with interested parties (Xin, 2018). It equally applies to memorandums of associations safeguarding the practices of companies or political unions. The written agreements and policies within the memoranda are the primary reference for the answers to amicably settle scores. There exist restrictions and qualifications for using documents at trial. The restrictions are relevant in safeguarding the authenticity and trustworthiness of such documents. An authentic document can be relied upon for further legal provisions and passing of judgments. Unreliable documents that gain access to legal systems evoke mistrusts on legal firms and consequently questions the professionalism of judges.

Judicial Noticed Evidence

A Judicial notice refers to a doctrine of evidence applied by courts to exercise the mandate of accepting the existence of a specific fact as commonly known by a person of average intelligence. The court establishes the existence of such facts by admitting evidence in a civil or criminal action (Garrett, 2018). The essentiality of judicially noticed evidence is to prevent the backlog of cases within the judicial systems.

Some of the common judicially noticed facts include the location of streets, buildings, and geographical areas. Law enforcers safeguard the existence of judicial notice evidence by according courts the authority and power to recognize certain facts in specific situations. For instance, in Hawaii, when a public vehicle is reported for violating vehicle equipment regulations, a trial court must take judicial notice of the driver’s subordinate position if the driver works for the company that owns the vehicle. The danger of judicial abuse is enshrined on its violation or compromise. Should the violation arise, the fact finder has deprived an opportunity to decide a contestable fact in a case. For example, in Walker vs. Halli Burton Services, Johnny walker fell from a tank trunk to a concrete floor. Upon seeking workers' compensation benefit for his injuries, his claim was denied by the head office of the worker's compensation. Ironically, the work officer argued that she possessed the experience to judge the act as a soft tissue injury that would recover in weeks, preventing the walker from contesting that idea, hence disallowing the walker’s claim.

Admissibility of Evidence in Courts

The admission of evidence depends majorly on materiality and authenticity. Also, the ability of evidence to prove or disapprove facts is a key consideration to the centrality of passing judgments in courts.This is legally referred to as probative value. For instance, a photograph of a murder victim will be admissible to prove whether the defendant is responsible for the act. Conversely, a photograph of how the body looks like after one week following the act will not be admissible due to low probative value. As such, high probative value is dependent on the timeliness of the facts.

Conclusion

Traditional evidence plays an integral role in criminal cases within courts across the world. As a result of legitimate concrete evidence present in a case, a suspect of a crime can either be convicted or dismissed of a crime. The paper has, therefore, focused on different types of evidence, with the basic ones touching on real, demonstrative, documentary, and testimonial type of evidence. The paper has equally gone further to make a discussion on judicially noticed evidence.

References

Baier, W., Warnett, J. M., Payne, M., & Williams, M. A. (2018). Introducing 3D Printed Models as Demonstrative Evidence at Criminal Trials. Journal of forensic sciences, 63(4), 1298-1302. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1556-4029.13700

Garrett, B. L. (2018). Evidence-Informed Criminal Justice. Geo. Wash. L. Rev., 86, 1490. https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6606&context=faculty_scholarship

Imwinkelried, E. J., Giannelli, P. C., Gilligan, F. A., Lederer, F. I., & Richter, L. (2016). Courtroom Criminal Evidence. LexisNexis.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/abstractdb/AbstractDBDetails.aspx?id=105418

Xin, P. (2018, December). Empirical Study on Court Investigation of Documentary Evidence in Criminal Trial Taking the Substantive Trial Demonstration Court of the Court of C City as a Sample for Analysis. In 4th International Conference on Economics, Management, Law, and Education (EMLE 2018) (pp. 784-788). Atlantis Press.
https://download.atlantis-press.com/article/55909911.pdf.