Maybe this will help:
Dear ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Mr. Almighty prosecutor says there's evidence that my client committed the crime to which he's accused. Evidence. Evidence he says. Well, you know what, he's right; there's garboodles of evidence, but what he's failed to explain is that not a single piece of evidence has been properly qualified. It's called evidence, yes, but with the absence of credibility, it's rightly called BAD evidence. Bad evidence. So no, I won't stand before you and say no evidence has been brought forward. I'll simply tell you like it should be told. I'll tell you the way it is. There is no good evidence (only bad evidence with no backing--no credibility).
See, we mistakenly say that something isn't evidence when it doesn't show what it's intended to show, but it's the intending itself that distinguishes it from evidence as opposed to purported fact. Something isn't rightly called evidence unless there's utility--good or bad. I'm not going to call something evidence merely because. Tracks on the road isn't going to be referred to as evidence without having a purpose for using said fact to support something.
A MAN drove down the road; here's the tracks as my evidence. Good evidence? Not necessarily. It could have been a woman. Evidence, yes. Proof, no. It supports the claim that a man drove down the road; after all, had it been a man, there's the tracks. That it was a woman just goes to show that the evidence isn't good enough to prove it was a man. So, is it evidence that a man drove? Yes because it was used to support the contention but bad because it fails to identify the sex of the driver.
