Report and Recommendations - Scottish Government

cases. The Lord Justice General (Clyde) summarised the general law in asingle paragraph which is worth revisiting 44 :“Upon this branch of the law two matters at least can be said to bedefinitely established. In the first place… it is well settled that noconviction in Scotland will stand if it is based upon the evidence ofonly a single witness, however credible he or she may be 45 … In thesecond place, it is equally well settled that two witnesses are notrequired to prove every fact in a case 46 … In between these twoextremes there is an infinite variety of possible situations in which thequestion of sufficiency of evidence can arise, and no single test ofsufficiency which will solve every such situation has ever been orindeed can be laid down. The matter must depend in the last resortupon whether the evidence is sufficient to carry the case beyond meresuspicion and into the sphere where it satisfied the tribunal that thecase is proved beyond reasonable doubt”.7.1.19 The last sentence is one which may be said to define the rule of sufficiencywhich a modern legal system ought to have. But it does not encapsulate therequirement for corroboration as it might traditionally have been understood.Yet it is interesting that it should be so stated in a criminal case in the 1950s.The Lord Justice General continued with the issue of sufficiency in connectionwith proof of the commission of a crime 47 :“Firstly (sic), the evidence of a single witness to the commission of thecrime may be sufficiently corroborated by surrounding facts andcircumstances, so as to establish the necessary degree of certainty 48 …Secondly, in the case of circumstantial evidence, two witnesses are notnecessary to each circumstance 49 … It is to be observed that in a caseof circumstantial evidence it is not a matter of one witnesscorroborating another, for each may be speaking to a quite separateand independent fact. It is the mutual interlacing and coincidence ofthese separate facts which can establish the case against the accused”.44 At 35-3645 Alison ii, 551; Hume ii 383; Dickson ii para 180746 Hume ii 384; Alison ii 552, Dickson ii para 181147 at 3648 Hume ii, 38449 Alison i 323; Hume ii 384; compare Dickson ii para 1811 and Alison ii, 551251