What is circumstantial evidence in Florida?
Answer: So circumstantial evidence, as opposed to direct evidence, would be evidence that potentially ties an individual to a particular crime. So where there might not be admission, or there might not be a body, let’s just say, a fatality of some sort. But there’s other types of evidence like cell phone records or phone calls tying an individual to a particular place or time. That’s typically where you see circumstantial evidence. You sometimes will see it in a DUI case where an individual was involved in an accident, and let’s say they say, “I wasn’t the driver of the car, somebody else was driving,” and yet, they have damage on their head which is consistent with damage to the windshield, and let’s say the car is registered to them, and let’s just say they also made a phone call to somebody.
So when they tie all these three things up to say, “Hey we can circumstantially put you behind the wheel of the vehicle even though we have no direct evidence which would put you behind the wheel from a third party. We can circumstantially tie you to the crime.” And the prosecutor is able to make that argument ultimately to a jury or to a judge in an attempt to convict somebody of the crime charged.