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Comment by Ferret7446 | Hacker News Reader

No, it's more like, if you and your neighbor have competing businesses, and you were accused of fraud, your neighbor testifies that you're an asshole. It's an opinion from someone who hates you/benefits from convicting you. Now, if they had actual evidence it'd be different (I assume not from the title, article is paywalled).

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This is an antitrust case. Google's competitors are victims of the alleged monopolistic behavior. If you're going to make the analogy right, then the alleged crime needs to be that you defrauded your neighbor's business. I can't imagine a court barring your neighbor from testifying that you defrauded him just because he'd benefit financially from a ruling against you.

The person testifying in this case is the CEO of the company that runs the second largest search engine in the country.

The trial is about if Google used illegal practices to suppress and harm competitors.

So the person testifying, literally, is the victim of the crime.

> It's an opinion from someone who hates you/benefits from convicting you.

Hence why the opposing side gets the opportunity to cross-examine the witness, and why it would be a really bad idea to put forward a witness who clearly has a grudge against the accused. In cross you just show they have a grudge and now their testimony is suspect.

> Now, if they had actual evidence it'd be different

It is actual evidence. I don't think you know what evidence is...

By "actual evidence" people usually mean evidence that can't be discarded as easily as testimony.

If the testimony is easily dismissable, then submitting it would be bad for their case. They wouldn't submit it as evidence unless it could be backed up or was reasonable. It's a serious mistake to underestimate testimony as somehow less useful in a case.

"He said, she said" is easy to dismiss. "He said, she presented a CCTV recording" is a different story.

Hard/soft evidence are established legal terms.

The CCTV recording would be direct conclusive evidence. In the absence of such evidence, testimony that can't be disproven in cross and casts reasonable doubt will work just fine.

Even with a CCTV recording, you can use testimony to cast the CCTV recording in a light favorable to either the prosecution or defense. The circumstances surrounding evidence are weighed in order to come to a verdict or judgement.

Court cases are not about "who has the most incontrovertible proof", they are about convincing a judge or jury of an idea in order to get a specific outcome. Do not underestimate testimony (or really, any evidence that you think is inferior)

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