Supreme Court criminal cases may be either direct evidence or circumstantial evidence. Direct evidence is the form of a testimony, which proves a fact without any inference or presumption, establishes facts and is true. It is evidence that can be applied immediately and in a direct manner to the fact to be proved. The evidence must conclusively establish the fact (Ingram, 2012). An example of a case with direct evidence is the case against gender discrimination Wynn & Wynn, P.C. v. Mass. Comm'n, 431 Mass. 655. This criminal case involved a claim of gender discrimination in employment in which the hearing officer found the fact to be a direct evidence of discrimination. The case involved a pregnant law clerk and the direct evidence consisted of proof that the managing partner responsible for her hiring said that he would not hire her if he knew that the clerk was pregnant. The woman was not hired as an associate after graduating from the law school.
Circumstantial evidence is evidence that proves a fact that may allow an inference of the existence of another fact be easily drawn. It also refers to testimony not based on actual personal knowledge or eye witness of the facts in question, but on facts from which deductions can be made indicating the facts sought to be proved indirectly (Ingram, 2012). In most criminal trials circumstantial evidence is mostly employed. Circumstantial evidence allows the judge to presume a certain fact from other facts that can be proved. An example of a circumstantial evidence was involved the trial of a Scott Lee Peterson accused of murder of his wife Laci and their unborn child to be named Conner, in Madeso, California. In this case, the prosecution made efforts to provide evidence of the circumstance from which it would be easily and logically deduced by the jury, or make inferences, a fact that cannot be proven directly. However, it can be proved by the evidence of the circumstance, or circumstantial evidence.