The bias against circumstantial evidence
Research shows jurors routinely undervalue circumstantial evidence and overvalue direct evidence, despite research indicating the former is more probative than the latter.
I was Juror No. 7. For five weeks, I sat through a murder trial in D.C. Superior Court. I listened to police testimony and eyewitness accounts of the aftermath of an armed robbery that left the victim dead from a bullet to his head.
While many aspects of the case were eye-opening — a window into the grim world just a few miles from my upper Northwest home and the fallout of gun violence that upends lives both emotionally and physically as witnesses move into the witness protection program — one aspect was particularly striking. For me, the deliberations highlighted a basic misunderstanding of evidence and how the law works. Several times jurors dismissed evidence as “just circumstantial.”
Circumstantial evidence, or indirect evidence, is evidence that, if believed, proves a fact from which you may conclude another fact exists. Perhaps through myths perpetuated by “Law & Order”-type shows, circumstantial evidence is somehow considered inferior in a court of law. Yet outside the legal realm, we rely on it unquestioningly: If you didn’t see it rain but the sidewalks are wet and puddle-pocked, you infer through circumstantial evidence that it rained.
My case turned in large part on the credibility of the prosecution’s chief eyewitness. He testified that he heard a gunshot outside his apartment and ran to the door to discover the defendant, whom he knew, riffling through the pockets of the victim’s jeans. The prosecution could not produce the murder weapon. The eyewitness did not see a gun, although he testified that he saw the defendant tucking something into his waistband. But the witness clearly saw the victim, his roommate, lying on the ground and the defendant standing over the body only seconds after the shot. Other circumstantial evidence from cellphone data placed the defendant in the vicinity of the crime at the time it occurred.
\
Although the voluminous jury instructions included a description of direct and circumstantial evidence and instructed jurors that both were valid forms of evidence, jurors exhibited a clear bias in favor of direct evidence. No one, for example, doubted that the eyewitness heard a gunshot and ran to the door.
EndFragment