To: Peter Tillers' Dynamic! General Home Page

---

Picturing Hearsay

Peter Tillers

Copyright 2001

 

The assessment of testimonial evidence is a special form of hierarchical or multistage inference. Assessment of this type of evidence involves conclusions or judgments about various attributes of the (human) source of the (testimonial) evidence:

The following figure adds one attribute -- memory -- to the assessment of testimonial evidence:

 

Hearsay presents a more troublesome inferential problem than does a single testimonial statement because hearsay involves at least two testimonial reports, it involves reports of testimonial reports. If each of two testimonial reports in a chain of two testimonial reports is offered to show that the matters reported are true, assessment of this hearsay evidence requires the assessment of two linked sets of testimonial attributes rather than just one set of testimonial attributes.

Hearsay evidence takes the following form:

The testimonial attributes pertinent to the credibility of each of the two linked testimonial reports shown above can come into question in the assessment of the probative value of hearsay evidence.