Title: Att skapa en indiciekedja - Indicier och dess förhållande till beviskravet i brottmål
Abstract:The evidentiary requirement in the Swedish legal system is set highly. For a defendant to be convicted for a felony, it needs to be set without reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime....The evidentiary requirement in the Swedish legal system is set highly. For a defendant to be convicted for a felony, it needs to be set without reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime. Yet, there are several cases in which the defendant has been convicted for a felony with only circumstantial evidence in the case.
Circumstantial evidence is an ambiguous concept but in the Swedish doctrine it is defined as indirect traces of a crime. Circumstantial evidence is indirect because it cannot directly be attributed to a crime. Examples of circumstantial evidence are motives, threats and the defendant’s actions before and after the crime.
A circumstantial evidence cannot alone confirm an evidentiary fact. It cannot refute an evidentiary fact either. The function of circumstantial evidence is first seen when they cooperate as structural evidence and thereby constitute an evidentiary fact. The structural evidence means that the available circumstances together builds a structure that can, but is not always enough to, reach the evidentiary requirement.
Since circumstantial evidence is not regulated in the Swedish law, a couple of cases have been reviewed in order to determine what is required for circumstantial evidence to be set without reasonable doubt. According to a case from the Swedish Supreme Court there shall not be room for alternative perpetrators and at the same time there needs to be evidence that positively ties the defendant to the crime.
The evidence in a case need to answer questions such as what the motives are, when, how and who committed the crime. The more questions that are answered, the higher the probability for the defendant to be convicted for a felony.Read More
Publication Year: 2018
Publication Date: 2018-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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