Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAPTER XI.: OF SUPPRESSION OR FABRICATION OF EVIDENCE, CONSIDERED AS AFFORDING EVIDENCE OF DELINQUFNCY. - The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 7 (Rationale of Judicial Evidence Part 2)

Return to Title Page for The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 7 (Rationale of Judicial Evidence Part 2)

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Law

CHAPTER XI.: OF SUPPRESSION OR FABRICATION OF EVIDENCE, CONSIDERED AS AFFORDING EVIDENCE OF DELINQUFNCY. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 7 (Rationale of Judicial Evidence Part 2) [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 7.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


CHAPTER XI.

OF SUPPRESSION OR FABRICATION OF EVIDENCE, CONSIDERED AS AFFORDING EVIDENCE OF DELINQUFNCY.

Supposing the whole mass of evidence actually suppressed, no such discussion (it is evident) can have place, as the inquiry concerning the probative force belonging to any part of it, or the circumstances, by the consideration of which, that force may be diminished.

But, under the head of these several modifications of criminative circumstantial evidence considered as deducible from active deportment, the attempt, successful or unsuccessful, is to be understood: for it is by the attempt, successful or unsuccessful, that the state of the mind is indicated; and it is from the state of the mind, that the criminative inference is (not less properly than naturally) deduced.

Preventing as it were the birth of evidence, by preventing from becoming witnesses (i. e. percipient witnesses) those by whom that character might otherwise have been acquired, is a criminative circumstance already brought to view, viz. under the head of clandestinity. The circumstances in view under the present head, are such as are capable of taking place at a more advanced stage of the business, viz. at any point within the length of time intervening between the moment in which the offence is considered as having been committed, and the moment at which the evidence produced in consequence of prosecution comes to be delivered. The mal-practice here in question is, therefore, any act whereby a person who, in relation to any criminative fact in question, has already been in the condition of a percipient witness, is prevented, or is endeavoured to be prevented, from appearing in the character of a deposing witness. But to draw, for the separation of the two objects, a clear line of distinction applicable to all cases, would be found impossible.

Under one or other of the two general heads here mentioned, the following specific modifications of circumstantial criminative evidence seem comprisable:—

1. Destruction, concealment, eloignment,* or falsification of any already existing source of real or written evidence, tending or supposed to tend to the inculpation of the supposed delinquent.

2. Interception of evidence, oral, real, or written. Measures taken to prevent the forthcomingness or delivery of the evidence of a person whose testimony, in the character of a deposing witness, would tend, as supposed, to the inculpation of the supposed delinquent; or the evidence deducible from the written document, or other thing capable of operating in the character of a source of written or real evidence: ex. gr. by obstacles thrown in the way of whatever antecedent operations may be necessary to the delivery of it.

3. Subornation: causing a person to deliver false testimony, tending to the exculpation of the supposed delinquent.

4. Fabricating, or causing to be fabricated, evidence, real or written, tending to the exculpation of the supposed delinquent.—N.B. This is one out of several modifications of forgery in relation to real or written evidence.

As to infirmative counter-probabilities, considered as applicable to the criminative circumstances comprehended in this class,—the generally applicable ones already mentioned may perhaps be found, some of them, to be applicable upon occasion here, though in general with but a slight degree of probative (or rather disprobative) force.

The infirmative counter-probability peculiar to this class may be thus designated: apprehension of similar mal-practice on the other side.

The supposition that, in the character of an infirmative counter-probability opposed to any of the criminative circumstances in question, this consideration can operate with any such degree of disprobative force as to render it worth employing, involves the supposition of no ordinary degree of depravity on the part of the national character at the time.

English law affords a story, which, whether meant for truth or jest, may alike serve for exemplification. Pressed for payment on a forged bond, a man applies to his attorney. Client. “What is to be done?”—Attorney. “Forge a release.” On looking back, one cannot say exactly how far, it might not be impossible to find, even in English history, a period in which a story of this sort might have had a foundation in truth.

In some countries there have been said to exist a sort of houses of call, or register offices, for a sort of witnesses of all work, as in London for domestic servants and workmen in different lines, and in some parts of Italy for assassins.

Ireland, whether in jest or in earnest, was at one time noted for breeding a class of witnesses, known for trading ones by a symbol of their trade, straws sticking out of their shoes.

Under the Turkish government, it seems generally understood that the trade of testimony exists upon a footing at least as flourishing as that of any other branch of trade.

[* ]Eloignment, a word adopted from the French into English law language, is wanted, together with its conjugates cloigner, to eloign, in current language. For eloigning a man, the general stock of the language has no better expression than getting him out of the way.

Tampering—viz. with evidence—is a term applied as well to the endeavour to intercept oral testimony, with the consent of him who should have delivered it, as to the endeavour to procure by subornation false testimony, from one who otherwise would not (it is supposed) have delivered any testimony at all, or would not have delivered other testimony than what was true.

Labouring and embracing are words used in law language as synonymous with tampering, but only where the persons tampered with are considered as invested, or about to be invested, with the character of jurymen.

By tampering seems to be meant, an endcavour to cause the person in question to act, on the occasion in question, any part contrary to what is considered as being his duty with reference to the ends of justice. In this sense, it seems applicable with equal propriety to the situation of any person whose duty it is considered to be, in virtue of any function (permanent or occasional,) to render his services in any way conducive to these ends: to the situation consequently of judge (permanent judge,) juryman, or subordinate minister of justice; or in the case of any officer considered in the light of a public officer, prosecutor as well as witness.

As to the means whereby a man may be caused to swerve from the line of his duty, whether by eloigning him (getting him out of the way) or otherwise, they seem comprisable under three heads, viz. corruption, deception, and force: including under the notion of force, as well psychological (i. e. fear of evil) as physical.

[]For a list of these operations, see Scotch Reform (Vol. V.) Table I. Col. iii.