Basic Jargons To Law of Evidence

· Admissibility
All relevant facts are admissible to prove the facts in issue unless they are excluded by any of the exclusionary rules i.e. on inter alia hearsay, character or opinion. This of course means that admissibility is dependent on the law of evidence. It must be noted that a fact may be relevant on more than one issue but admissible only on one such issue. It may also be relevant both on the issue and as to witness credibility, but admissible only as to credibility.

· Relevance
Relevance is a logical question concerning probability. It depends on the existence of a logical relationship between a fact and another fact. The fact that it requires a logical nexus from a fact to another indicates that ‘relevance’ is pertaining to common sense.

· Facts in issue
The facts in issue are those that a party must prove in court in order to succeed. These facts are found by examining the substantive law as well as what the other party admits or denies (perhaps by way of defence). Note that the facts in issue do not include facts pertaining to the credibility of the party. This means that in a criminal case, it is the ingredients of the offence and defences raised by the accused that are the facts in issue.

· Credibility
The credibility of a witness deals with the degree of trustworthiness of the testimony given by the witness concerned.


· Weight
The weight of the evidence deals with the ‘value’ or probativeness to be attached to the evidence. This is to be decided by the jury.

· Testimony
This simply means the oral evidence of a witness in court.

· Documents
These are evidence that is in the form of documents. It must be noted that documents have different evidential status according to whether they are classified as private or public documents. What needs to be remembered about documentary evidence is the fact that they could be hearsay (if brought into court to rely on the truth of its assertion) or non-hearsay (if it is brought into court for some other purposes apart from relying on the truth of its assertion like to show the handwriting) or even real evidence (when for e.g. where it is blood-stained and brought into court to show the existence of the blood.)

· Real Evidence
These are things produced in court for the jury to draw their own inferences from the appearance of the matter in question. E.g. bloodstained knife

· Direct Evidence
This is evidence that a witness observed a fact in issue.

· Circumstantial Evidence
This is evidence from which the inference might be drawn that a fact in issue occurred. E.g : motive, opportunity, preparation to the event etc.

· Hearsay Evidence
This is the one that gives by far the greatest difficulty. Thus, extra emphasis must be placed on this area of the law. To put it simply, hearsay evidence is what was overheard and relied on testimonially i.e. for the truth of its assertion. The test is dependent on the statement being tendered into court to rely on it’s assertion i.e. to prove that the statement is true. This means that an out-of-court statement put forward to show the court that the statement was said with for .e.g an Irish accent, is therefore not hearsay. This area of law has been subject to fundamental change particularly with the recent enactment of the CJA 2003.