151 main. Either the court will decide the factual matter according to rules of proof (established by the people beforehand), or the people will make a decision via their representatives. As the first alternative has proved to be problematic, the second one, a trial by jury, must be chosen.3“' But Ehrströmwas uncertain as to the acceptability of a modern, liberal conception of criminal procedure in Finland - a country that was part of an absolutist Russian Empire. His harsh criticismof the existing system and his outright approval of the jury system must have seemed, on the second reading, overly radical even to himself, for a cross is drawn (undoubtedly by the author himself) over the critical parts, including the Titus example, of the lecture, and the same pencil has written the following, laconic remark in the margin: “We must, anyhow, stick to the law’s rules of proof.”^^ Therefore, we do not know for certain whether Ehrström actually spoke against the statutory system of proof, or whether he only intended to do so. His support for the the jury was unambiguous. And, indeed, Ehrström could not resist the temptation later in his lecture course of returning to the question of the jury. The teacher regrets the fact that in the system of statutory proof, the judge may sometimes have to decide a case against his conscience. The only remedy to the problem is to leave the evaluation of evidence to the judge’s conscience, i.e., a jury which, as an independent, neutral body also offers better guarantees against arbitrariness than “regular” courts. Although juries may, at times, fall into political partiality, no better form of court has been invented, according to Ehrström. After the crossed-out parts, Ehrström quits policy analysis and returns to the order of the day; he teaches the lawof proof as it stood in the statutory law. The professor goes through the old theories on confession and witnesses in basically the same way Nehrman or Calonius would have done a hundred years or fifty years before.Nevertheless, when Ehrströmcomes to the theory of circumstantial evidence, his theory on the structure of crime shines through. Ehrström rejects the old division of indicia into proximalrernota^ levia/graviaIgravissima and introduces a division into subjective and objective circumstantial evidence which better corresponds to the novel conception of division of the components of crime into subjective and objective ones. The subjective ones are evidence of the “direction of the will” {viljas riktning), and the objective ones offer proof of the outer, objective Merkmal?^ Ehrström strongly disapproves of the intermediate decision types (conditional acquittal, absolutio ab instantia). Citing Mittermaier, Ehrströmsays that Ibid. p. 480. Ibid. p. 481. Ibid. p. 537. Ibid. pp. 484-544. Ibid. pp. 484-552.
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