157 proof. However, this opinion has now been abandoned by the constantly progressing legal development, and not because of some statutory measure taken but through court practice, which under the unescapable pressure of circumstances and the influence of a freer evidentiary theory has gradually begun to regard the indirect evidence of equal worth with the direct one. This change is especially visible in criminal procedure, within which indirect evidence has the greatest importance, and where the need of its equalization with direct evidence must appear the strongest. The practice in question is as a matter offact so constant that hardly any judge would hesitate, even in the most serious criminal cases, to convict the accused on the basis ofpure circumstantial evidence, at least if the circumstance that the crime ... has actually been committed ... is shown through direct evidence ... On the basis of what has been said, and since the legal practice treated above cannot be deprived of evidentiary value, we come to the conclusion that as far as the impact of circumstantial evidence is concerned, our judiciary has at the moment a completely or at least almost completely free right of evaluation. When Wrede goes on to interpret and explain the particular provisions of the PS, he largely forgets his opposition to the legal theory of proof and adheres to the written law. Regarding confession, Wrede repeats the traditional requisites. For him, confession is clearly — although not always only — a method of proof. Concerning “lifssaker,” crimes that carry a death penalty, confession alone does not suffice for conviction, but it needs to be accompanied by other evidence. Again, it would be “... more correct to leave the determination of the evidentiary value [of the confession] completely to the judge’s free evaluation. The circumstances that increase or decrease the credibility of the party’s statement in his own case, and especially the ones that may cause the accused to give a true or false confession, are so many and different that they can only in casu be correctly deemed and valued, which is why legal rules can only hinder the judge in each case fromassigning the confession the value that it deser\'es.”^' As for witness evidence, Wrede seems at his most faithful to the letter of the PS. As to the essentials, he repeats the old doctrine on eyewitnesses such as it had been expressed by predecessors in the previous centuries. Two classical witnesses are needed for full proof. As to the essential circumstances - not the nonessential ones {biomständigheter) - the witnesses’ statements have to coincide. If they do, their statements have to be taken as full proof.^’- As against Ibid. p. 251. (italics HP) The need to establish corpus delicti by direct evidence is taken from the German jurisprudence. See also Forsman 1896, in which the lecturer claims that the statutory theory of proof has become a “dead letter”, that it is common to convict on circumstancial evidence, and that absolutio ab instantia has become practically abolished and purgatory oath used to a far lesser extent than was intended by the drafters of the Law of 1734. Forsman 1896 pp. 280-281. '>> Wrede 1894 pp. 101-108. '’2 Ibid. p. 291.
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