Hearsay Evidence Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Hearsay Evidence - Essay Example "Hearsay evidence can be thought of as:- any statement made otherwise than by a person while giving oral evidence in the proceedings, which is tendered as evidence of the matters stated." http://www.forensicmed.co.uk/hearsay.htm Hearsay evidence is the second hand information that is used as evidence and it does not have any proof of its existence. It cannot be proved beyond doubt, and the doubt always exists even after the judgement. It is impossible to say that this really happened, but even the most brilliant law expert can only say that it might have happened. This made it unpalatable for the use of courts in earlier days. But now the act, looking at the importance and possibilities it holds, has made it admissible. "It occurs when a witness testifies NOT about something they personally saw or heard, but testifies about something someone else told them or said they saw. Hearsay usually involves an attempt to get some crucial fact entered into evidence that cannot be entered into evidence by any other means," http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/405/405lect11.htm In entering this as real evidence, Court will be depriving the other side a chance to process the evidence, by cross examining the witness, or verifying the evidence. There is nothing to cross-examine, as it is a kind of story, compared to other hard evidences, which glorify under solid proof. But there is an exception in the confession statement, where hearsay evidence is upheld. "The most important exception to the hearsay rule is admission or confession evidence. It is generally assumed that a party in a case would not make a statement against his or her own interests unless the statement was true" http://oasis.gov.ie/justice/evidence/hearsay_evidence.html As the confessions are an exception to the rule of Hearsay Evidence, even before the Act, a person stating another person's confession of a crime in the court, had been admissible. Victims of domestic violence sometimes could find it difficult to testify in the Courts for a variety of reasons and the statements of prosecution on their behalf might take the form of hearsay statement, or a secondary statement. While admitting these statements, Court does adhere to a lot of conditions and circumstantial proof. Statements made by the patients to the Medical officers usually are not disclosed as it comes under the priviledged category. But if disclosed, keeping the context in view, they might be admissible, even though it comes under the hearsay evidence category. The relevant rules for the hearsay evidence, are the best evidence rule, the opinion evidence rule and the self-serving evidence rule. Before the Act in question came into being, the rule prevalent was: "A.2.1. The Rule: Written or oral statements, or communicative conduct made by persons otherwise than in testimony at the proceeding in which it is offered, are inadmissible, if such statements or conduct are tendered either as proof of their truth or as proof of assertions implicit therein." http://www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/about/publications/weighevid/evidence_app_e.htm Hearsay evidence was thought to be untrustworthy, for the following

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried Research Paper

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried - Research Paper Example The ambiguity of Tim’s dubious first person narration along with epistemological uncertainties that the narrator’s storytelling raises rather force the readers to rely more and more on the narrator as a guide through the atrocities and cruelties of war as per what to go and view the massacre and where not to. Therefore Tim’s as a narrator exploits the opportunity of being dubious to the readers just to warn them how storytelling can cheat their eyes. Referring to this epistemological uncertainty that the stories render Catherine Callaway comments as following: â€Å"The epistemological ambivalence of the stories in the Things They Carried is reinforced the book’s ambiguity of style and structure† (250) The narrator Tim himself along with his ambiguity renders the narrative an apparently believable continuity between the episodes of the novel, and hereby, sustains a progress, though little about the war, much about the spiritual progress. That is, th e narrator relates more of a spiritual journey than a military one. The surface level expectation, of the readers, that the novel tells the story of a war, is fulfilled through Tim’s effort to let the readers feel the immediate experience of war standing close to the battleground. Yet the war progresses little through these episodes. Rather the tantalizing meaning of the war continually gets developed through the elegiac continuity which exists among the episodes. The narrator, Tim O’Brien himself sits at the center of this continuity as a medium that links between the episodes. His role is more of a spiritual agent who symbolizes the progress, not of the war, but the war’s meaning or reality. Though the episodes of the narrative are not chronologically sequenced and not exclusively military-progress specific, an intangible progress prevails throughout these episodes. Being threatened and subsequently being provoked by the ambiguity and dubiousness of Timâ€℠¢s narrative techniques the readers’ attempts to muster the meaning from these episodic pictures necessarily gives birth to this meaning that war is not something conventionally assumed by the most. The stories told in twenty-two chapters of the novel â€Å"range from several lines to many pages and demonstrate well the impossibilities of knowing the realities of war† (Callaway 251). Sometimes the stories abruptly stop only â€Å"to be continued pages or chapters later† (Callaway 252). Often some stories are told by several characters part by part or randomly. Yet the validity of some stories can be questioned from the very beginning though they are told as if they are true. Referring to the possible motif behind this random fashion of storytelling Callaway comments: O’Brien draws the reader into the text, calling the reader’s attention to the process of invention and challenging him to determine which, if any, of the stories are true. As a result, the stories become epistemological tools, multidimensional windows through which the war, the world, and the way of telling a war story can be viewed from many different angles and visions. (Callaway 253) The episodes narrated by Tim serve as a set of catalysts that raise the epistemological uncertainties about the conventional perception of war. Tim recounts his experiences about the war and oft-repeatedly comments on them. He tells the story of the war when it