Were the dog alerts in any way significant?

[Mr Gray]

An alert is circumstantial evidence, or can lead to a case being made using other circumstantial evidence, particularly where there is no evidence to the contrary;

After a massive search of the farm and surrounding countryside Gloucestershire Constabulary found no evidence of Kate, 55, inside or outside the property.

There were no traces of blood, or signs of a struggle, but the cadaver dog indicated to police that a dead body had been in the living room.

Gloucestershire Constabulary drew together a mass of circumstantial evidence that pointed to Prout having strangled his wife with his bare hands and burying her body.

A jury of 11 men and women found him guilty by a majority of 10 to one and he was sentenced to life in prison. He must serve a minimum of 18 years.



Read more: http://www.gloucestercitizen.co.uk/Cadaver-dog-sniffed-death-Prout-home/story-11860269-detail/story.html#ixzz3Zq7zU0mK
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who says an alert is circumstantial evidence...grime doesn't...he says it has no evidential reliability. In the prout case there was a mass of circumstantial evidence......where is the circumstantial evidence that maddie died in the apartment...there is none

[Carana]

Not from PT criminal law:

Circumstantial Evidence Definition:
    Evidence which may allow a judge or jury to deduce a certain fact from other facts which have been proven.

Related Terms: Evidence, Direct Evidence

Evidence which may allow a trial judge or jury to deduce or logically infer a certain fact from other established facts, which have been proven.

Justice Best in the 1820 case, King v Burdett:
http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/C/CircumstantialEvidence.aspx



 Circumstantial evidence
Law


Circumstantial evidence,  in law, evidence not drawn from direct observation of a fact in issue. If a witness testifies that he saw a defendant fire a bullet into the body of a person who then died, this is direct testimony of material facts in murder, and the only question is whether the witness is telling the truth. If, however, the witness is able to testify only that he heard the shot and that he arrived on the scene seconds later to see the accused standing over the corpse with a smoking pistol in his hand, the evidence is circumstantial; the accused may have been shooting at the escaping killer or merely have been a bystander who picked up the weapon after the killer had dropped it.

The notion that one cannot be convicted on circumstantial evidence is, of course, false. Most criminal convictions are based on circumstantial evidence, although it must be adequate to meet established standards of proof. See also hearsay.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/118468/circumstantial-evidence



CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

Circumstantial evidence is best explained by saying what it is not - it is not direct evidence from a witness who saw or heard something. Circumstantial evidence is a fact that can be used to infer another fact.

Indirect evidence that implies something occurred but doesn't directly prove it; proof of one or more facts from which one can find another fact; proof of a chain of facts and circumstances indicating that the person is either guilty or not guilty.

E.g., If a man accused of embezzling money from his company had made several big-ticket purchases in cash around the time of the alleged embezzlement, that would be circumstantial evidence that he had stolen the money. The law makes no distinction between the weight given to either direct or circumstantial evidence.
E.g., X is suing his wife, Y, for a divorce, claiming she is having an affair with Z. Z's fingerprints are found on a book in X and Y's bedroom. A judge or jury may infer that Z was in the bedroom. The fingerprints are circumstantial evidence of Z's presence in the bedroom. Circumstantial evidence is usually not as good as direct evidence (an eyewitness saw Z in the bedroom) because it is easy to make the wrong inference

Y may have loaned Z the book and then carried it back to the bedroom herself after getting it back.

Circumstantial evidence is generally admissible in court unless the connection between the fact and the inference is too weak to be of help in deciding the case. Many convictions for various crimes have rested largely on circumstantial evidence.

CIRCUMSTANCES

The particulars which accompany a fact.

The facts proved are either possible or impossible, ordinary and probable, or extraordinary and improbable, recent or ancient; they may have happened near us or afar off; they are public or private, permanent or transitory, clear and simple or complicated; they are always accompanied by circumstances which more or less influence the mind in forming a judgment. And in some instances these circumstances assume the character of irresistible evidence; where, for example, a woman was found dead in a room with every mark of having met with a violent death, the presence of another person at the scene of action was made manifest by the bloody mark of a left hand visible on her left arm.


These points ought to be carefully examined in order to form a correct opinion. The first question ought to be; is the fact possible? If so, are there any circumstances which render it impossible? If the facts are impossible, the witness ought not to be credited. If, for example, a man should swear that he saw the deceased shoot himself with his own pistol and upon an examination of the ball which killed him it should be found too large to enter into the pistol, the witness ought not to be credited. Or if one should swear that another had been guilty of an impossible crime.
http://www.lectlaw.com/def/c342.htm