A certificate of innocence is a court order conclusively stating that you did not commit the crime for which you were convicted. To start this process, you should either obtain or write a petition to the court asking for a certificate of innocence.

Circumstantial evidence is evidence of facts that the court can draw conclusions from. For example, if an assault happened on O’Connell Street at 6.15pm, you can give evidence that you saw the accused walking down O’Connell Street at 6pm. In that situation, you are giving the court circumstantial evidence.

Forensic evidence Other examples of circumstantial evidence are fingerprint analysis, blood analysis or DNA analysis of the evidence found at the scene of a crime.

It is possible but more difficult, to convict a person on circumstantial evidence alone. Direct evidence simply is not available for every crime. Circumstantial evidence can also be used to the defendant’s advantage.

Circumstantial evidence is proof of a fact or set of facts from which one could infer the fact in question. Both direct and circumstantial evidence are considered legitimate forms of proof in federal and state courts. A person may be convicted of a crime based on circumstantial proof alone.

A confession can serve as powerful evidence of a suspect’s guilt, but criminal defendants have a constitutional right against self-incrimination. An involuntary confession that was coerced by a police officer cannot be used against a defendant in court, regardless of whether it was true.

Yes. It’s up to the fact-finder (a jury, if there is one, otherwise the judge) to decide how credible the witness’s testimony is and how much weight to give credible testimony. A victim’s testimony alone is not always enough to convict. So, yes, a witness is more than enough to gain a conviction!

There is reason not to treat the statement under Section 313 of the Code of Criminal Procedure as evidence as the accused cannot be cross- examined with reference to those statements. However, when an accused appears as a witness in defence to disprove the charge, his version can be tested by his cross-examination.”

A general criminal law principle known as the corpus delicti rule provides that a confession, standing alone, isn’t enough for a conviction. In some states, the prosecution can’t even present evidence of the defendant’s confession (for example, by playing a recording of it) without this kind of corroboration.

Corpus delicti (Latin: ‘body of the crime’; plural: corpora delicti) is a term from Western jurisprudence referring to the principle that a crime must be proved to have occurred before a person can be convicted of committing that crime.

(1) Actus reus—The guilty act (2) Mens rea—The guilty mind (3) Concurrence—The coexistence of (1) an act in violation of the law and (2) a culpable mental state (4) Causation—The concurrence of mind and act must produce harm.

They may say that the prosecutor will go easy on you if you confess, or that you can get a reduced sentence. In short, the police will say anything they can think of (including flat-out lying to you) to coerce a confession out of you. But no matter what, you should never confess to a crime while in police custody.