The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution sets forth rights related to criminal prosecutions. It was ratified in 1791 as part of the United States Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court has applied most of the protections of this amendment to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Fruit of the poisonous tree is a legal metaphor used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The logic of the terminology is that if the source of the evidence or evidence itself is tainted, then anything gained from it is tainted as well.
First adopted in 1975, the Federal Rules of Evidence codify the evidence law that applies in United States federal courts. In addition, many states in the United States have either adopted the Federal Rules of Evidence, with or without local variations, or have revised their own evidence rules or codes to at least partially follow the federal rules.
The law of evidence, also known as the rules of evidence, encompasses the rules and legal principles that govern the proof of facts in a legal proceeding. These rules determine what evidence must or must not be considered by the trier of fact in reaching its decision. The trier of fact is a judge in bench trials, or the jury in any cases involving a jury. The law of evidence is also concerned with the quantum (amount), quality, and type of proof needed to prevail in litigation. The rules vary depending upon whether the venue is a criminal court, civil court, or family court, and they vary by jurisdiction.
Admissible evidence, in a court of law, is any testimonial, documentary, or tangible evidence that may be introduced to a factfinder—usually a judge or jury—to establish or to bolster a point put forth by a party to the proceeding. For evidence to be admissible, it must be relevant and "not excluded by the rules of evidence", which generally means that it must not be unfairly prejudicial, and it must have some indicia of reliability. The general rule in evidence is that all relevant evidence is admissible and all irrelevant evidence is inadmissible, though some countries proscribe the prosecution from exploiting evidence obtained in violation of constitutional law, thereby rendering relevant evidence inadmissible. This rule of evidence is called the exclusionary rule. In the United States this was effectuated federally in 1914 under the Supreme Court case Weeks v. United States and incorporated against the states in 1961 in the case Mapp v. Ohio, both of which involving law enforcement conducting warrantless searches of the petitioners' homes, with incriminating evidence being descried inside them.
Witness impeachment, in the law of evidence of the United States, is the process of calling into question the credibility of an individual testifying in a trial. The Federal Rules of Evidence contain the rules governing impeachment in US federal courts.
Makin v Attorney General for New South Wales is a famous decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council where the modern common law rule of similar fact evidence originated.
R v Béland [1987] 2 S.C.R. 398 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision where the Court rejected the use of polygraph results as evidence in court.
R v Handy, [2002] 2 S.C.R. 908, 2002 SCC 56, is the leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on similar fact evidence. The Court proposed what is known as the Handy test for determining whether past occurrences that resemble the crime can be admitted as evidence.
In the law of evidence, similar fact evidence establishes the conditions under which factual evidence of past misconduct of accused can be admitted at trial for the purpose of inferring that the accused committed the misconduct at issue.
A balancing test is any judicial test in which the jurists weigh the importance of multiple factors in a legal case. Proponents of such tests argue that they allow a deeper consideration of complex issues than a bright line rule can allow. But critics say that such tests can be used to justify any conclusion, upon which the judge might arbitrarily decide.
Holmes v. South Carolina, 547 U.S. 319 (2006), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court involving the right of a criminal defendant to present evidence that a third party instead committed the crime. The Court vacated the rape and murder conviction in South Carolina of a man who had been denied the opportunity to present evidence of a third party's guilt, because the trial court believed the prosecutor's forensic evidence was too strong for the defendant's evidence to raise an inference of innocence. The Court ruled unanimously that this exclusion violated the right of a defendant to have a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense, because the strength of a prosecutor's case had no logical relationship to whether a defendant's evidence was too weak to be admissible.
R v Mohan1994 CanLII 80, [1994] 2 SCR 9 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on the use of expert witnesses in trial testimony.
The hearsay provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 reformed the common law relating to the admissibility of hearsay evidence in criminal proceedings begun on or after 4 April 2005.
Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172 (1997), discussed the limitation on admitting relevant evidence set forth in Federal Rule of Evidence 403. Under this rule, otherwise relevant evidence may be excluded if the probative value of the evidence is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, misleading the jury, or considerations of undue delay, wasting time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence. In this case, Old Chief offered to stipulate to the fact of a prior conviction, which was an element of the crime with which he was charged. The prosecution resisted this stipulation, arguing that it had the right to present its case in any manner it chose. In Old Chief, the Court applied Rule 403 to the particular situation presented by this case, and concluded that Rule 403 required the trial court to accept the defendant's stipulation to a prior conviction over the prosecution's objection.
Relevance, in the common law of evidence, is the tendency of a given item of evidence to prove or disprove one of the legal elements of the case, or to have probative value to make one of the elements of the case likelier or not. Probative is a term used in law to signify "tending to prove". Probative evidence "seeks the truth". Generally in law, evidence that is not probative is inadmissible and the rules of evidence permit it to be excluded from a proceeding or stricken from the record "if objected to by opposing counsel". A balancing test may come into the picture if the value of the evidence needs to be weighed versus its prejudicial nature.
Lorraine v. Markel American Insurance Company, 241 F.R.D. 534, is a case in which a landmark decision about the admissibility and authentication of digital evidence was set down in the form of a 100-page opinion by Magistrate Judge Paul W. Grimm.
The South African law of evidence forms part of the adjectival or procedural law of that country. It is based on English common law.
O'Brien v Chief Constable of South Wales Police [2005] UKHL 26 was an English evidence law decision of the House of Lords which held that evidence of previous bad behaviour, known as similar fact evidence, may be admitted in civil case proceedings if it is probative of a relevant matter.
Mahomed v R [2011] NZSC 52 was a case in the Supreme Court of New Zealand concerning the admissibility of propensity evidence against defendants facing criminal prosecution.
