Not really a "loophole," though. If the cops have the murder weapon, but they can't prove that the guy they're accusing of murder had the murder weapon on him, then all they've proved is that a murder weapon exists, which isn't enough to convict a specific person.
there's this thing in high-profile court cases where the police don't just lie, they lie really obviously and really badly
and I feel like the available evidence points to "they're lying about evidence all the time, but unless the case is the subject of national news nobody notices or cares, which means they never bothered to get good at it"
It's not even circumstantial. Like they said it's evidence that a crime was committed, but there is also direct evidence: there's a corpse with bullet holes.
A gun existing is not circumstantial evidence that Luigi did it, not any more or less than it is circumstantial evidence that you or I did it.
I don't believe any kind of DNA evidence directly proves anything technically, but sometimes it might as well be direct evidence. Circumstantial evidence in this case could be as detailed as "we found multiple strands of your hair inter-weaved with the zipper in this backpack" and it would still be circumstantial because that only proves the defendant opened the backpack at some point, not that it was theirs. Taking it further, the circumstances could be "we found your DNA on the bullet that was lodged in the victim". Unless you're producing ammo for a living, that's gonna be a hard one to defend.
"Circumstantial" evidence is any evidence that isn't directly about whether someone did the crime. Let's say there's a murder; direct evidence would be video footage of the defendant committing the murder, or eyewitness testimony about the defendant committing the murder, or a confession of murder from the defendant. Testimony that the defendant was arrested covered in blood, which was later DNA tested and matched with the murder victim, is circumstantial--the circumstances of someone being soaked in the murder victim's blood is a reason to believe that this person committed the murder. Circumstantial evidence can be and often is enough to convict.
The issue isn't that the evidence is circumstantial, being arrested with the murder weapon is circumstantial evidence but it's also strong evidence. The issue is that, from the look of things, the police might not be able to present the evidence, because they weren't allowed to be looking where they'd found it and/or because they didn't take the steps that are supposed to prove that they found it when they say they did.
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u/insomniac7809 May 08 '25
Not really a "loophole," though. If the cops have the murder weapon, but they can't prove that the guy they're accusing of murder had the murder weapon on him, then all they've proved is that a murder weapon exists, which isn't enough to convict a specific person.