1. A method, comprising: receiving a case; generating a set of candidate answers for the case based on a corpus of information; excluding a first candidate answer from the set of candidate answers upon determining that a first attribute in the case precludes returning the first candidate answer as a valid response to the case based on a first rule, of a plurality of rules for processing supporting evidence; processing supporting evidence for the remaining candidate answers in the set of candidate answers by searching for items of evidence in the corpus of information that include passages supporting at least one candidate answer for each candidate answer in the set of candidate answers; and foregoing processing supporting evidence for the first candidate answer by refraining from searching for items of evidence in the corpus of information that include passages supporting the first candidate answer.