EVIDENCE, CIRCUMSTANTIAL. The proof of facts which usually attend other facts sought to be, proved; that which is not direct evidence. For example, when a witness testifies that a man was stabbed with a knife, and that a piece of the blade was found in the wound, and it is found to fit exactly with another part of the blade found in the possession of the prisoner; the facts are directly attested, but they only prove circumstances, and hence this is called circumstantial evidence.
2. Circumstantial evidence is of two kinds, namely, certain and uncertain. It is certain when the conclusion in question necessarily follows as, where a man had received a mortal wound, and it was found that the impression of a bloody left hand had been made on the left arm of the deceased, it was certain some other person than the deceased must have made such mark. 14 How. St. Tr. 1324. But it is uncertain whether the death was caused by suicide or by murder, and whether the mark of the bloody hand was made by the assassin, or by a friendly hand that came too late to the relief of the deceased. Id. Vide Circumstances.

A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States. By John Bouvier. Published 1856.

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References in periodicals archive

(9) Weststeijn (1989) provides an early approach to the description of what he calls "lyric sujet" mainly pointing out the specifically poetic features of plot, namely the tendencies to generality, the reduction of circumstantiality and the preference for mental developments.

Plotting the lyric: forms of narration in poetry/Die liriese intrige: manifestasies van narratiwiteit in die poesie

Suggesting even more broadly that the transnational is "a critical frame that deliberately recognizes the circumstantiality of knowledge," Chuh thus conjoins it to a critique of both academic disciplines and interdisciplinary studies as circumstantial knowledges.

Feminist studies of Asian American literary/cultural studies

Circumstantiality, verisimilitude, and many more of the qualities which we recognize as identifying characteristics of realism in narrative are all natural functions of the eye-witness point of view.

La novela historica contemporanea entre la referencialidad y la textualidad: ?una alternativa falaz en la critica latinoamericana?

always incorporated speaking and writing, reading and telling, and accepted as inevitable not the separation between speech and writing, not the disjunction between a text and its circumstantiality, but rather their necessary interplay.

Reading "The Lagoon" and Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" through Edward Said's The World, the Text, and the Critic

In his version, translated in Switzerland from English for Russian readers in 1833, Zukovskij has carefully, deliberately, and firmly placed the ballad in the waning Russian Ossianic "tradition." Where Campbell has provided authenticity through circumstantiality, Zukovskij has achieved it through association with Ossianic myth.

Zukovskij's Translation of Campbell's "Lord Ullin's Daughter" (1)

Subsequently, "circumstantiality" is the third method to which Borges refers.

Borges and narrative economy: conservative formalism or subversion of signification?

The concept of "worldliness" for Said was a profound understanding of circumstantiality (materiality) and the role of what Marx refers to as "sensuous" human activity in interpretation.

Reading Edward Said

Silva-Corvalan found that three contextual features, frame of reference, circumstantiality, and susceptibility to change, provided the means through which language loss across three generations of speakers could be characterized.

Semantic transparency as a predictor of copula choice in second-language acquisition *

When Doctor Leete explains this incredible series of events, West is struck by "the circumstantiality of this narrative" and finds it hard to believe (54).

Utopian Evolution: The Sentimental Critique of Social Darwinism in Bellamy and Peirce(*)

Younger children with AD/HD may exhibit delayed speech and language development.19 The physician may note that school-aged children with AD/HD exhibit a mild degree of tangentiality or circumstantiality in their verbal expression.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: assessment, diagnosis, and management

He was ready to face up to or face down, in all their grainy circumstantiality, whatever excited his moral or intellectual passion.

The Letters of Charles Dickens