EVIDENTLY COOL: MASTER RELEVANCE

Relevance is the first stop on most any Evidence exam. Here’s the big picture.

BIG PICTURE

Whether in class or on an exam, you will be given an item of evidence. It could either be testimony from a witness, a written document or even an object. As a general rule, for either of these items to be admissible in court the evidence must be relevant, competent and not excluded. As a practical matter one attorney is trying to find grounds to admit the evidence and the other is trying to identify rules to exclude the evidence. We’re going to focus on the role that relevance plays in the process of admitting evidence.

LOGICAL VS. LEGAL RELEVANCE

There are actually two types of relevance; logical relevance on the one hand and legal relevance on the other. Our first stop is logical relevance.

GENERAL RULE

In order to be admissible all evidence must be logically relevant. This means that the evidence must tend to make an important fact, or what’s called a material fact, more or less probable. Basically, evidence is logically relevant and has what’s called probative value is if it is more likely to prove or disprove a material fact.

AN EXAMPLE

So let’s say Billy is on trial for murder. An eyewitness offers testimony that she heard the victim shout, “Billy has a gun!”

The first step is to spot the issue. At issue is whether the statement the eyewitness heard is relevant.

The second step is to look at whether the evidence is probative of a material fact. This simply means that we have to determine whether the evidence is being offered to prove or disprove a substantive legal issue. Evidence supporting that Billy’s victim witnessed him holding a gun is a substantive issue in his murder trial.

The next step is to assess whether the proffered evidence has a tendency to make the material fact more or less probable. Sure, evidence of what the eyewitness heard would make the fact that Billy had the gun that shot the victim more likely.

LEGAL RELEVANCE

But just because the evidence has leaped over the logical relevance hurdle doesn’t mean that it is admissible. There is still the question of whether the evidence is legally relevant. Legal relevance is about weighing the risk of admitting the evidence on a scale. You see, on one side of the scale is the likelihood that the evidence will prove or disprove the material fact. We call this the probative value of the evidence. We established the probative value moments ago when we analyzed logical relevance.

On the other side of the scale is the chance that admitting that same evidence will confuse or mislead the jury, unfairly prejudice a party by causing the jury to be bias or unduly delay the trial. If the evidence is more logically relevant or has more probative value then risks such as prejudice or confusion will not substantially outweigh the logically relevant evidence.

When reading a case, answering a question in class or analyzing on an exam your role is to make arguments that weigh both sides – that is the logical relevance against the legal risks. So that’s Relevance! Now that you’ve got the big picture, read your cases, listen in lecture and get practice analyzing Relevance with practice problems.

Good Luck!