Evidence Outline

Evidence
RELEVANCE
 
I.        The General Requirement of Relevance
A.     The Basic Standard and Its Application
                                                               ·      Rule 402 requires that evidence be relevant to be admitted and that irrelevant evidence be excluded:
All relevant evidence is admissible, except as otherwise provided by the Constitution of the United States, by Act of Congress, by these rules, or by other rules prescribed by the Supreme Court pursuant to statutory authority. Evidence which is not relevant is not admissible.
                                                               ·      Rule 401 provides the following definition of relevance:
“Relevant evidence” means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.
                                                               ·      Rule 403 allows the trial judge to use discretion to avoid admitting evidence under certain circumstances even when its admission would seem to be required under Rules 401 & 402:
Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.
                                                               ·      Rule 104(a) provides that the judge decides questions of admissibility under the common law:
Preliminary questions concerning the qualification of a person to be a witness, the existence of a privilege, or the admissibility of evidence shall be determined by the court, subject to the provisions of subdivision (b). In making its determination it is not bound by the rules of evidence except those with respect to privileges.
B.     Unfair Prejudice
                                                               ·      Appellate courts usually defer to trial court rulings based on Rule 403. Even if evidence has only slight probative value, an appellate court will rarely reject a trial court’s ruling that its legitimate value exceeds the risk of unfair prejudice associated with the evidence.
                                                               ·      An unusual case, Old Chief v. United States,[1] illustrates how slight the probative value of evidence may have to be for an appellate court to rule that it is less than the risk of unfair prejudice.
o        Defendant was accused of the crime of being a felon in possession of a firearm. Defendant admitted that he was a felon, but the trial court allowed the introduction of detailed evidence about the defendant’s earlier crime. This was erroneous. A full description of the prior offense had no probative value, because the defendant had conceded that he was a felon.
                                                               ·      In contrast, criminal defendants accused of violent crimes almost always seek to stipulate to the nature of wounds or other injuries suffered by the victim, but prosecutors are allowed to introduce gruesome photographs illustrating them. Appellate courts typically hold that a stipulation cannot fully convey the nature of the harms inflicted on the victim, so the photographs are considered to have probative value that exceeds the improper emotional effect that they create.
C.     Limited Admissibility
                                                               ·      A single item of evidence is relevant to one issue in a case and is a type of evidence forbidden to be considered with respect to another issue.
                                                               ·      Rule 105 provides for a “limiting” instruction, which tells jurors to consider the information only with respect to the topic for which it is legitimately admitted:
When evidence which is admissible as to one party or for one purpose but not admissible as to another party or for another purpose is admitted, the court, upon request, shall restrict the evidence to its proper scope and instruct the jury accordingly.
                                                               ·      This allows the proper use of the information, consistent with the pro-admissibility trend of modern evidence law in general and the Federal Rules in particular, while it decreases somewhat the risk that the jury will use the information improperly.
D.     Conditional Relevancy
                                                               ·      Sometimes an item of evidence by itself will have no relevance to any issue in a trial, but would be relevant if the trier of fact also had some other information. Rule 104(b) governs this situation:
When the relevancy of evidence depends upon the fulfillment of a condition of fact, the court shall admit it upon, or subject to, the introduction of evidence sufficient to support a finding of the fulfillment of the condition.
                                                               ·      Flight
o        Courts usually reason that fleeing the jurisdiction supports an inference that the defendant believed he or she was guilty, and that this supports another inference that the defendant in fact was guilty. Thus, flight is usually admitted as relevant to guilty.
o        Usually unsuccessful counterarguments maintain that flight should be excluded because it may show only fear of wrongful conviction, and because even a belief in guilt may not truly indicate guilt under the detailed substantive standards applicable to any given crime. A similar approach is taken to evidence about destroying evidence or trying to obtain perjured testimony.
                                                               ·      Similar Happenings
o        In determining the relevancy of similar occurrences evidence, a court will examine the surrounding circumstances of the previous incident to compare them with the alleged facts of the incident that is the subject of the trial. If the earlier events took place under conditions with characteristics that were similar to the conditions present at the time of the event that is the basis of the suit, information about them will be considered relevant. The proponent’s legal theory will affect which and how many characteristics in the past events and the litigated event must be similar to each other.
o        However, there is a risk that evidence of past injuries may be highly prejudicial. Jurors who hear about injuries to people other than the plaintiff may be inspired to make the defendant pay money to the plaintiff even if they are not persuaded there really was negligence in the plaintiff’s instance.
                                                               ·      Statistical Proof
o        In People v. Collins[2] a married couple were criminal defendants charged with robbery. The husband was a black man who sometimes wore a beard, and the wife was a white woman with blond hair. Eyewitness testimony supported the contention that the robbers were a black man with a beard and a white woman with blond hair. An expert in statistics testified for the prosecution about the probability of occurrence of many factors in the case, such as a couple being composed of two people with the combination of racial and other physical appearance attributes of the defendant couple. The California Supreme Court found a number of problems with this:
§         First, in calculating probabilities, it is necessary to have some empirical basis for assigning values to any event. The expert witness here merely made guesses about the frequency of occurrence of the attributes he used for his calculations, such as how many black men have beards and how many do not.
§         Another problem was that in calculating probabilities of combinations of difference variables, the variables must be “independent.” That requirement was not met in the expert’s testimony.
§         Finally, the court was concerned that jurors might improperly confuse the probability of a couple possessing the traits possessed by the defendants with the probability that the defendants were not guilty.
o        Most courts are cautious with regard to scientific or technical material when they think members of the jury will have difficulty in adopting a critical stance toward it. This leads them to scrutinize the relevancy of probability evidence more closely than the relevancy of other types of evidence.
o        Also, courts are reluctant to admit probability evidence on issues such as the identity of the wrongdoers is that in criminal cases the fact-finder is supposed to be persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt, while probability evidence by its nature incorporates some degree of doubt.
o        Even in civil cases, where the standard of proof is a preponderance of the evidence, some courts may believe that probability evidence cannot be weighed fairly with other types of information.
II.      Specific Exclusions of Relevant Material
A.     Insurance
                                                               ·      Rule 411 states:
Evidence that a person was or was not insured against liability is not admissible upon the issue whether the person acted negligently or otherwise wrongfully. This rule does not require the exclusion of evidence of insurance against liability when offered for another purpose, such as proof of agency, ownership, or control, or bias or prejudice of a witness.
                                                               ·      This rule is based on a fear that jurors who know a party has insurance may find that party liable only because they believe the liability will be cost-free to that party, or that jurors will