Prima facie Prima facie Prima facie (; ) is a Latin expression meaning "on its first encounter" or "at first sight". The literal translation would be "at first face" or "at first appearance", from the feminine forms of "primus" ("first") and "facies" ("face"), both in the ablative case. In modern, colloquial and conversational English, a common translation would be "on the face of it". The term "prima facie" is used in modern legal English (including both civil law and criminal law) to signify that upon initial examination, sufficient corroborating evidence appears to exist to support a case. In common law jurisdictions, "prima
Transient evidence Transient evidence Transient evidence is term used in criminal forensics to indicate elements of physical evidence that might be expected to degrade or disappear within a particular time frame. As such, it is one of the five primary categories of physical evidence codified in "Legal Medicine" by the American College of Legal Medicine, along with conditional evidence, pattern evidence, transfer evidence and associative evidence. While, in a sense, many types of evidence degrade with the passage of time (such as witness recollections, a victim's clothing, etc.), the term is specific to factors with an inherently limited period of existence. A