Ress Ipsychocutor is a Latin legal phrase that translates to English as

The Thing speaks for itself. This doctrine is commonly applied in several tort actions

to establish the negligence of a defendant. Imagine that an elevator in an apartment building

plunges several floors,

injuring the people inside it. Or, a lawnmower box falls from a high shelf at Costco, crushing

a customer. The plaintiff might not be able to prove exactly why the elevator plunged, or why

the box fell from the shelf. But they don't have to because, well, the thing speaks for itself.

Elevator cars and boxes don't typically fall on their own,

and so, under Recipso-Locutor, jurors can infer

that there must have been some kind of negligence by the defendant

that led to the plaintiff's injuries.

And so under civil law, where the burden of proof is simply more likely than not, this makes

a lot of sense.

Conversely, courts have found that Red Sipsa Lockwooder doesn't apply in criminal realms,

where the prosecution must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The prosecution can't simply point to a dead

husband or child and claim that their wife or mother must have murdered them because people

don't die in their own. Instead, the prosecution has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt

that some specific actor acts by the defendant caused the death of the victim. Or at least,

that's how criminal

law operates in the vast majority of cases. But there's a clear exception to this rule,

and it's one that's led to countless caretakers, typically mothers, being wrongfully convicted

...