RELEVANCE –
You can’t introduce any evidence you want because:
· It would take forever;
· It would be ridiculous
SO, you have RELEVANCY! -> Limits the information that can be used to influence factfinder.
Rule 401 – Defines relevance. -> Appellate courts generally defer to trial court decisions.
Evidence must be relevant and all relevant gets in unless the Constitution, or Congress, or some rule says that it stays out (Rule 402).
Even relevant evidence can be excluded if it poses certain risks (like excessive time, confusion, or unfair prejudice) (Rule 403). -> Appellate courts generally defer to trial court decisions.
Basic question – Does the existence of one fact “shed light on the likely existence or non-existence of another fact.”
Basic Approach:
· What are they trying to introduce?
· What purpose do they claim it will serve?
Relevance: Essentially, does the existence of one fact shed light on the likely existence or non-existence of another fact?
· “Any tendency to make the existence of a [material] fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence” (Walsh).
Standard of review for 401 decisions is “less deferential.”
The “abuse of discretion” standard of review for 403 decisions is more deferential because to overturn it, the trial court must have “clearly exceeded the bounds of reason or disregarded rules or principals of law or practice to the substantial detriment” of one party.
Conditional Relevance (Cox) -> Some evidence may only be relevant if some other fact is also true (i.e., that the defendant knew of what happened at the bond reduction hearing. -> Rule 104b addresses situations like this where you have to believe one thing in order for something to be relevant.
In a 403 balancing analysis, alternative and less-prejudicial forms of evidence (i.e., stipulation/admission vs. disclosing a criminal record) may be relevant in determining its admissibility (Old Chief).
Needs assessment of “probative value” in Walsh:
· Relative importance of the fact to be inferred in the overall context of the lawsuit?
· The degree to which the fact to be inferred is actually disputed?
· The availability and quality of other evidence that would tend to prove the same point?
· After you’ve weighed the probative value, you compare it to the risks in 403. -> The probative value’s got to be a lot smaller.
How protective of appellate courts of trial court decisions? Very! (See Kaechelle). -> In Kaechelle, the guy got beat up outside the convenience store and the court admitted the number of phone calls to the cops and evidence of prior assaults, saying the trial court had been careful not to admit so much that would be unfairly prejudicial.
If one party is trying to introduce evidence of prior claims, a foundational showing is required that shows that the prior claims happened under “substantially similar circumstances.” -> This doesn’t require all that much because in Lovick, it was enough that the other claims involved wings falling on people, and it didn’t matter that the wings had fallen for different reasons.
Someone introducing evidence of a lack of prior claims would have to provide a foundational showing that the other products that HAD not led to prior claims were “substantially identical” (Spino). The judge in the Spino case also required some sort of proof (record books) that supported the lack of prior
o worry about the trustworthiness because the actions reflect the correctness of their belief.
· Unintended implied assertions also make the problems addressed by the hearsay rule less of an issue because the chances of the declarant lying go down when they aren’t intending to assert anything in the first place.
· The comments to FRE 801 suggest that in order to be a statement, it has to be an intended assertion.
· The comments acknowledge that allowing the unintended assertions to fall outside of the hearsay rule leaves problems of narration, perception, and memory, but says that the likelihood of lying is less and the risks of the other infirmities are small enough that we shouldn’t keep out the evidence.
· The Dullard court took a different approach though, saying that the underlying basis for the hearsay exclusion rule remains in tact for the most part, and that unintended assertions should therefore be covered by the hearsay rule just as intended assertions.
You can’t introduce out of court statements if their only purpose is to prove the truth of what they assert (Vincelette).
When the out-of-court statement is not introduced to show the truth of the out-of-court statement, the out-of-court statement is not hearsay. -> In Kenyon, it was introduced to show that he didn’t have the requisite mens rea to steal the truck Sanchez (Kenyon).
