Essay on "Gilbert Law: Evidence Gilbert Law Summaries"

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Gilbert Law: Evidence

Gilbert Law Summaries: Evidence

Introduction to Evidence

The Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) is a code of evidence law governing the admission of facts by which parties in the United States Federal Court system may present their cases, both criminal and civil. In 1965, Chief Justice Earl Warren appointed an advisory committee of fifteen lawyers and legal scholars to draft new evidentiary rules. The Rules began as proposed rules pursuant to a statutory grant of authority, and the United States Supreme Court circulated drafts of the FRE in 1969, 1971, and 1972. After a long delay that was blamed on Watergate, the FRE became federal law on January 2, 1975. There have been several subsequent amendments. There are 67 individually numbered rules, divided among 11 articles: (1) General Provisions; (2) Judicial Notice; (3) Presumptions in Civil Actions and Proceedings; (4) Relevancy and Its Limits; (5) Privileges; (6) Witnesses; (7) Opinions and Expert Testemony; (8) Hearsay; (9) Authentication and Identification; (10) Contents of Writings, Recordings, and Photographs; and (11) Miscellaneous Rules. The purpose of the rules of evidence is to regulate the evidence a jury may use to reach a verdict and to ensure that the jury has adequate evidence to reach a verdict but not so much evidence as to be overwhelming, inflammatory, repetitive, or confusing. They center on a few basic ideas, such as relevance, unfair surprise, efficiency, reliability, and overall fairness of the adversary process. Individual U.S. states are free to adopt or maintain evidence rules different from the Federal Rules, but the majority have adopted codes based in part or in whole on the FRE. Several significant amendments to the FRE include Prior Inconsistent Statement, Privileges, and Impeachment by Conviction. Whenever a dispute, whether civil or criminal in nature, reaches the court there will be a number of issues which the opposing parties will have to prove or disprove in order to persuade the court to rule in their favor. The law must ensure that certain guidelines are set in order to that the evidence presented to the court can be regarded as trustworthy. The litigation process is dependent on rules of evidence in order to guarantee fairness and impartiality.

Chapter II: Types and Forms of Evidence

There are two basic types of evidence, direct evidence and circumstantial evidence. Direct evidence is evidence that proves a fact directly. Eyewitness testimony is the most common type of direct evidence. Circumstantial evidence proves a fact indirectly by first proving another fact, and from this other fact an inference may be drawn as to the original disputed fact. An example would be Jane hearing John yell "Help, I'm being stabbed!" And then running into the next room, where she sees Jim standing over John with a bloody knife in his hand. Circumstantial evidence suggests truth while direct evidence proves truth. There are three basic forms of evidence: real, demonstrative, and scientific. Real evidence is also referred to as physical evidence and consists of tangible materials such as hair, fibers, latent fingerprints, paint chips and glass, and biological material like blood, semen, and saliva. Physical evidence is objective and when collected, documented, and preserved properly is more reliable than testimonial evidence. Locard's Exchange Principle applies to physical evidence and states that whenever someone is present within an environment, something is added to it and something is removed from it. Demonstrative evidence is evidence that demonstrates, illustrates, or recreates evidence that has already been presented, such as a sketch, diagram, or photograph of an accident scene. Exculpatory evidence is evidence that tends to clear a party of blame or guilt.

Chapter III: Procedure for Admitting or Excluding Evidence

Admissibility refers to evidence that is relevant without being prejudicial and it must have some indicia of reliability. Admissible evidence is that which a court receives and considers for the purpose of deciding a particular case. Presenting evidence before the court differs from collecting evidence in very important ways. The presentation of evidence to prove or disprove the point at issue is strictly governed by rules, and failure to follow these rules results in a number of consequences, including but not limited to the refusual of the evidence to be entered into the record and considered in the decision of the case. The commissioner or judge will making rulings on whether or not specific evidence is admissible based on very specific standards of evidence, in what is known as rulings of admissibility at the trial level. A Brady Motion is a request to the judge to dismiss a case because evidence favorable to the accused has been suppressed by the state. Generally, evidentiary rules only apply to the trial court. The appellate court will review trial court rulings to determine issues of admissibility in regards to a fair and impartial trial and the right or need for a new trial based on admissibility of evidence.

Chapter IV: Relevancy and Its Counter Weights

Admissible evidence is any testimonial, documentary, or tangible evidence that may be introduced in a court of law in order to establish or support a fact proposed by a party to the proceeding. The three basic prerequisites of admissibility are relevance, materiality, and competence or reliability, also known as probativeness. Relevancy refers to evidence that has any tendency to make a fact more likely, or to increase the likelihood of the fact for which it is offered. Evidence does not need to make a fact certain to be relevant, or even more probable than not, it must only have the tendency to prove or disprove a fact. Materiality refers to evidence that will prove a fact that is being contested or is an issue in a case. Competency refers to specific traditional requirements of reliability. Evidence must meet a certain standard of reliability in order to be considered competent. If evidence is shown to be relevant, material, and competent, it is generally admissible. Evidence of character is generally not admissible in order to show action on a particular occasion, but evidence of habit is. Character is a generalized quality usually attributed to a person, such as truthfulness, violence, drunkenness, etc. A habit is a specific, regular, and consistently repeated behavior, for example the practice of always locking one's doors.

Chapter V: The Hearsay Rule and Its Exceptions

The general nature of hearsay is information gathered by one person from another person concerning some event, condition, or thing of which the first person had no direct experience. Such statements are called hearsay evidence and are generally not admissible in court as prohibited by the hearsay rule. The Federal Rule of Evidence 803 lists 23 exceptions to the hearsay rule, including excited utterance, recorded recollection, records of regularly conducted activity, public records and reports, marriage, baptismal, and similar certificates, family and property records, and judgment of previous conviction.

Chapter VI: Privilege

Under common law, privilege is afforded by any of a number of rules that excludes evidence that would be against the best interest of a relationship or would be adverse to a fundamental principle or relationship if it were disclosed. Privilege rules give the holder of the privilege a right to prevent the witness from giving testimony. The general principle applicable to all forms of privilege is to protect confidential communication between parties that are involved in a formal relationship in order to promote the freedom to communicate within the context of such relationship in order to facilitate the proper functioning of that relationship. Specific forms of privilege are attorney-client privilege, without prejudice privilege, public interest privilege, medical professional privilege, and clergy-penitent privilege, marital privilege or husband-wife privilege, and privilege against self-incrimination. The effect of privilege is the right on the part of a party in a case to allow him to prevent evidence from being introduced in the form of testimony from the person to whom the privilege runs.

Chapter VII: Competency to Testify

Competence refers to the mental capacity of a person to participate in legal proceedings. Defendants in criminal cases who lack competence are commonly excluded from prosecution, while witnesses who lack competence are not allowed to testify in either a civil or criminal trial. There are 11 landmark cases that have developed the standard of adjudicative competence, from 1960 to 2003, through a body of case law. Dusky v. United States determined the competency evaluation, which states that competency is determined by whether the accused has sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding, and whether he has a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him. Ford v. Wainwright determined that an inmate on death row has the right to be evaluated to determine whether he is competent enough for his death sentence to be carried out. Competency was used to determine whether individual Indians could use land that was allotted to them in the General Allotment Act, also called the Dawes Act.

Chapter VIII: Opinion Evidence and Expert Witnesses

Testimonial evidence relates to statements… READ MORE

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