Part of the problem, of course, lies in how some people perceive the term “corroborating evidence.” For many who aren’t lawyers, the term means eyewitnesses to the incident in question. With respect to the Kavanaugh matter, when such people say that there isn’t any “corroborating evidence” to support Ford’s accusation, what they really mean is that there isn’t any eyewitness testimony to support her accusation.
The only eyewitness to the purported assault would have been Kavanaugh’s friend, Mark Judge, who Ford said was in the room during the assault. But Judge sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee denying any recollection of the event. Therefore, since he presumably couldn’t support Ford’s accusation and since there were no other eyewitnesses in the room, that caused some people to conclude that Ford had failed to provide any evidence to corroborate her accusation.
What such people fail to realize, however, is that the law provides that there can be corroborative evidence that does not consist of eyewitness testimony.
For example, suppose Mary is driving a car that is negligently struck by a car that is being driven by John. John flees the scene but Mary knows who he is. When Mary accompanies the police to John’s house, he denies having committed the hit and run.
Suppose that John has parked his car in the street and the police walk over to inspect it. They find a huge dent in the front bumper with paint on it that matches the color of Mary’s car. That dent and paint would constitute “corroborative evidence” to support Mary’s accusation, even though it doesn’t consist of eyewitness testimony.
Thus, under the law, eyewitness testimony is “corroborative evidence” but not all “corroborative evidence” is eyewitness testimony.
What is the corroborative evidence that shows that Christine Ford was telling the truth and that Brett Kavanaugh’s denial was false?
The corroborating evidence is what the law calls a “prior consistent statement.” This is a statement that a person makes prior to the incident in question that is consistent with her version of the events. Prior consistent statements become especially pertinent when a witness in a case is accused of fabricating a story. In such a case, the law permits the person to show, as a way to corroborate her testimony, that she told others the same story long before she supposedly fabricated the story.
The evidentiary principle of “prior consistent statement” as corroborative evidence is especially pertinent in the case of Christine Ford. That’s because she had previously told several people of the assault she had suffered and, more significantly, she told these people of the assault long before Kavanaugh was even nominated to the Court and even before Justice Kennedy had announced his retirement from the Court.
