Report and Recommendations - Scottish Government

7.2.18 It may seem immediately apparent that, were modern legislators seeking todevise a model for sufficiency of proof in the today’s sophisticated world ofinformation and communications technology, corroboration would not be atthe forefront of their thinking. If a crime is shown happening on a CCTVrecording, it hardly seems necessary for proof that the recording be spoken toby two witnesses, even if the camera does sometimes “lie”. If a person’s bodyis examined by a recognised pathologist and he assures the court that theperson was dead, it hardly seems necessary to insist that another doctor giveevidence to prove that death. There are many more examples, even if there arealso situations, including certain instances of eye-witness identification, wherea fact finder may be advised not to rely on the evidence of one witness alone.However, in order to deal with the problems of the requirement in thetwentieth and twenty first centuries, the courts developed a series of subsidiaryrules all of which, like the dicta in Gillespie v Macmillan, were ultimatelydesigned to create a sufficiency of proof, where none would exist were therequirement to be enforced in its traditional Romano-canonical guise.Moorov7.2.19 The most complex aspect of the law of corroboration in modern times ismutual corroboration, or corroboration by similar facts, highlighted in,although not strictly created by, the celebrated case of Moorov 24 in 1930.Moorov itself was concerned with the sufficiency of identification evidencewhere each of a number of complainers, who were all assistants in a draper’sshop, spoke to the appellant as the perpetrator of indecent assaults on her. No24 Moorov v HM Advocate 1930 JC 68264