You the jury...

Bravo, stolichnaya.

[QUOTE=Max Torque]
Well, in the past I’ve put it this way: let’s say you make a nice chocolate cake and you leave it up on the counter. You step out of the kitchen for a while. When you come back, a chunk of cake is missing, as though grabbed by a tiny hand. Your three-year-old child’s stool is next to the counter, right by the cake. There are chocolatey handprints on the walls leading to your child’s room. And, your three-year-old is in his room with chocolate all over his face.
[/QUOTE]
Your honor, we submit that the cake seen on my client’s face was the product of a warrantless and illegal search of his room, and further request that evidence be suppressed. :smiley:

[QUOTE=stolichnaya]
Now, wait, I have to be serious now. What kind of evidence is not circumstatial? Eyewitness and video? Confession?
[/QUOTE]

Sounds like it. There’s a Wikipedia article on circumstantial evidence which gives the analogy of a witness reporting seeing that it’s raining means that there is direct evidence of rain. Sitting on the subway and seeing someone come in, wet, with an umbrella, is circumstantial evidence of rain.

So I suspect that direct evidence would have been one of Miss A’s neighbors seeing their old neighbors Mr. and Mrs. X returning to their old house, going in, and leaving with some items which are among the ones she reported missing.