A flat denial is worth a hundred ingenious defences in which the act is admitted but the attempt is made to explain it away.

It is this that gives the jury so much trouble in criminal cases.

For example, in the case of the pickpocket the lawyers and the judge may know that the complaining witness is a worthy woman, the respectable mother of a family, and that the defendant is a rascal.

But each comes before the jury presumably of equal innocence.

She says he did, he says he didn't.