ABSTRACT
The first is that all evidence emerges as the result of some sort of selection. One kind may be loosely described as ‘natural selection’. Not all the evidence that is relevant to a particular inquiry will have survived. Witnesses may have died; documents may have been destroyed; the physical features of a building may have been altered. Another sort of selection is human selection. In any investigation, someone has to gather the evidence that has survived. But to gather evidence effectively, you have to be intelligent enough to recognise what may be significant, and honest enough to do the job without pre-conceived ideas of what the outcome of the investigation should be. Natural selection and human frailty between them ensure that no jury ever sees more than a part of the whole picture, and that part may indeed be a very small and misleading one.1
