Does a Criminal Court Need to Know Which Body Part Was Hit?

What happens when the court’s written account identifies one anatomical location, while the evidentiary material relied upon in the case identifies another?

Apparently, the answer may depend on how flexible an anatomical location is allowed to become once it enters a criminal case.

This page examines one specific evidentiary issue in Case R 706/2025/5226: the difference between the thigh identified in the court`s written account and the shin identified in the photographic material.

The question is not whether the two words can be reconciled rhetorically. The question is whether the underlying evidence corresponds to the physical act described in the judgment. Because a body part should normally have one useful feature in court: it should stay where it is.

1. What the Judge Wrote

The court’s written decision states that an impact was directed at the thigh (reiteen).

The anatomical location is therefore part of the factual account recorded in the judgment. This is wonderfully convenient. The judgment has chosen a body part. The thigh has officially entered the story.

The photograph, however, has not necessarily received the same instructions. And that is where the fun begins: once the written judgment says thigh, apparently the reader is invited to look at the evidence and discover the thigh hiding somewhere inside it.

2. What the Evidence Actually Shows

The evidentiary material includes an unidentified photographic image of a body part, transmitted via WhatsApp. The available material does not establish the identity of the person depicted. The material is subject to a 100-year state-secrecy classification and therefore cannot be disclosed or presented for public examination.  So we have two anatomical destinations for what is presented as the relevant injury.

The ruling’s evidentiary discussion identifies the relevant injury in connection with the shin (säären).

This creates a specific anatomical mismatch:

Judgment: thigh (reisi)

Evidentiary reference: shin (sääri)

One body. One photograph. Two anatomical locations. The Flexible Evidence.

Why force a photograph to remain tied to one body part when the written narrative can apparently move the injury somewhere else?

3. The Anatomical Question

This mismatch raises a fundamental question about the reliability of evidence and the standard of proof:

• The question is simple: If the photograph does not depict the anatomical location described in the judgment, what evidentiary link connects the photographed injury to the alleged act?
  And perhaps there is another, slightly more uncomfortable question:
  At what point does an interpretation of a photograph become a fact of the case?After all, if the image appears to show a shin but the judgment speaks of a thigh, perhaps the most flexible object in the courtroom is no longer the photograph.
  Perhaps it is the interpretation of the photograph.