Legal Presumptions and Their Role in Criminal Proof (A Comparative Study)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to show the effectiveness of presumptions and their role in criminal proof, through the extent of its impact on the criminal case as one of the evidentiary pieces of evidence therein, and the extent of the freedom they present to the criminal judge to take them as indirect evidence, and since the rules of evidence occupy great importance in the divisions of law, and as it is said "A right without evidence to support it is the same as nothingness", evidence is what supports the right and makes it prevail, and presumption is of such importance as it is one of the means of proof stipulated by the legislator, and adopted and approved by the judiciary and jurisprudence.
The presumption is regarded to have an important, vital, and effective role in the field of criminal proof, as original, complementary, or supporting evidence added to other evidence . It is no less in importance than other evidential evidence, especially when it has become the most reliable method in criminal justice in our current era due to scientific and technological progress in all fields, particularly after criminals resorted to using the most accurate modern scientific methods to commit their crimes without leaving any single trace.
Worthy to say that the the judicial presumption also has an important and influential role in demonstrating the reliability of the other evidence obtained and existing with it in the criminal case. The evidence extracted using the judicial presumption method is more like a controller and an observer on other evidence such as the testimony of witnesses and the confessions of the accused, etc., And because the inference of the unknown fact to be proven from the concrete fact is consistent with the rest of the criminal case circumstances, deducing the presumption requires the judge to derive the presumption from an established case for which there is no evidence to prove, and then show the logical causal relationship between the known fact and the other to be proven.
However, the supervision that the Court of Cassation imposes on the judge’s authority to derive or prove judicial presumption is only a legal supervision over the decisions and procedures either in terms of their reasoning or occurrence by mistake or the judge’s deviation from his discretionary authority in issuing the final ruling in the case before him or if his decision was not consistent with reason or with the common sense.
Consequently, we find it crucial and inevitable duty to address the issue of presumption, as it is one of the very important pieces of proof with the development of the criminal’s mind and his or her attempt to evade punishment. Therefore, we set out to write this research to show the role of presumption, whether legal or judicial, and its role in criminal proof according to a research plan consisting of two topics. In the first section, we will address the concept of presumption according to two requirements. In the first requirement, we explain the definition of presumption, and in the second requirement, the elements of presumption. As for the second section, it is devoted to the types of presumption. In two requirements, we will discuss in the first requirement the legal evidence, and in the second section we will explain the judicial evidence, and this is what we will address successively according to the research plan.