Direct Vs Circumstantial Evidence

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The rules of evidence vary greatly depending on the type of lawsuit that is being filed. It is essential to understand what all of the rules are and what the justification of the rules are. The purpose of the rules of evidence is to ensure that all law proceedings are fair, that there are no unjustifiable expenses incurred and that at the end of the proceedings there is a fairly rendered verdict. The major portion of the evidence discussion is to determine what evidence in the case filing will be deemed admissible or inadmissible, whether the evidence as direct or circumstantial evidence, and how that evidence relates to the statutes in the State of Florida with regards to relevancy, witness testimony, physical evidence, protected acts, …show more content…

Admissible evidence is any type of document, testimony, physical evidence that can be used in court and is relevant to the court case being heard. According to Florida Statute 90.401, “relevant evidence is evidence tending to prove or disprove a material fact” (Online Sunshine). Inadmissible evidence is any type of evidence that the court does not deem appropriate or relevant to the case. A form of inadmissible evidence could be hearsay. Briefly, hearsay is testimony that is made outside of court proceedings. Another form of inadmissible evidence can be when evidence is used in an attempt to misleading of jury. One other form of inadmissible evidence is a character witness. In these cases the evidence is thrown out and cannot be used against a person during legal proceedings. Some of these topics will be discussed in detail further in the …show more content…

To help in making the determinations between the two, it is first important to understand the definition of Trier-of-fact. Trier-of-fact is a judge or jury that would be used to determine the question of facts in case if necessary (Cornell Law). Now that the definition has been given for Trier-of-fact we can now discuss the two types of evidence. Direct evidence is evidence that does not require the Trier-of-fact to presume of infer that something occurred because of the being something or someone that can attest to the fact. In circumstantial evidence, a series of facts are given and it is up to the Trier-of-fact to make the determination of the primary fact (Legal