Circumstantial evidence

Yesterday’s British Columbia Court of Appeal decision in R. v. He, 2008 BCCA 418 is useful in outlining the law regarding a purely circumstantial case in a criminal context.

The Court writes:

[42] Sometimes a single piece of circumstantial evidence may be such as to exclude reasonable doubt. Robinson Crusoe’s discovery of the print of a man’s naked foot compelled his conclusion that he was not alone on his island.

…

[65] The law governing a proper conviction based solely on circumstantial evidence is well established. The trial judge is, of course, presumed to know the law. The fact that she did not expressly state that there was no other rational explanation for the circumstantial evidence but that the appellant committed the crimes, is not a basis from which to conclude that she misdirected herself on this elementary principle of criminal law.

[66] As to the competing inferences from the evidence which counsel urges were open to the trial judge, in R. v. To (1992), 16 B.C.A.C. 223, Chief Justice McEachern considered the judicial task of drawing inferences in a case of circumstantial evidence. At para. 41 the Chief Justice said:

It must be remembered that we are not expected to treat real life cases as a completely intellectual exercise where no conclusion can be reached if there is the slightest competing possibility. The criminal law requires a very high degree of proof, especially for inferences consistent with guilt, but it does not demand certainty.

[67] Those words are apposite in respect of the task of the trial judge in the case at bar.