Capital punishment

[Haruspex]

Court judgments are presumed to be correct on appeal or when viewed by other authorities.

It is exactly because a judgement cannot be pronounced correct without a bit of doubt that it can proceed to appeal. What reason would there be to grant leave if the case had been concluded correctly and the truth was known with no doubt. I think we are talking of about different presumptions. I'm not talking about procedural presumptions, but about the reason why the vertical hierarchy of the courts exists.

Judges are also experts on finding the facts from disputed evidence, and on instructing juries on how to find facts in jury trials. Under certain circumstances, new trials may be ordered to hear overlooked or newly-discovered evidence. I'm not aware of that being an issue in the Lockerbie case.

Yes, I agree that the judges are adept at applying the rules of evidence, but that doesn't make them forensic scientists, pathologists, parties to disputed contracts and it doesn't place them in the shoes of the party who is providing the evidence. Plus many judges have no desire to think outside of the world of the black letter lawyer. For instance, where a pathologist is asked to determine from the stab wound of a knife the speed at which the stabbing occurred, looking at the mark the guard of the knife left, even though it is accepted by all forensic pathologists that it is remarkably easy to overcome the resistance of the elastic skin, after which the object may proceed with great ease.

Communication between judges and experts where sophisticated evidence is concerned is often quite poor. Also, the judges are left to try to ascertain the truth from what has been offered. As I have said, the judges are great at applying the rules of evidence, but they have no abilities, 100% reliably, to tell whether a person is lying, holding back information or simply incompetent at expressing what he or she knows.

True enough. Almost nothing can be determined to 100 percent certainty. The beyond-a-reasonable-doubt burden of proof is a high one for the prosecution to meet.

Even such a high standard allows for error against the favour of the innocent party.

I find this statement most curious. There is far more fallibility in the political process, which doesn't even purport to go by logic and rational evidence.

Law adheres strictly to its own internal logic. Positive law may often succeed at doing what has been provided for by the relevant sources of law and in that regard it is logical and rational, but positive law may provide any sort of nonsense and the judges may apply to law entirely logically, even though such an application may precludes any reasonable outcome.

Btw, I'm an attorney with 29 years of experience in civil trials. I don't do criminal law, but am not entirely unfamiliar with that process. Our law here is derived mainly from the common law of England, so I doubt our two nation's systems are entirely different.

Well, Scotland is a mixed legal system, so it absorbed some elements of common law, but it is a system based, ultimately, on Roman law. I'm a national of Hungary, though, but I don't have much knowledge pertaining to its laws. Although criminal law in Scotland is more common law in nature. So on based on your greater experience in the field, I would have to defer, I suppose. But in any case, I am not making claims as to the rules of the court procedure, but pertaining to its invariable nature.