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Delivering Information to the Factfinder
Judge Birmingham shares his 4-step process of admissibility designed to help the practitioner analyze all evidentiary issues. The casebook will be divided into 4 parts according to this process of admissibility, offering excerpts from approximately 70 leading cases interpreting the rules of evidence most often used in criminal trials.
A trial is a well-regulated search for the truth. It is a fact-finding mission where jurors are called upon to answer a question: do they believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the person on trial is guilty of the crime charged? Their answer depends upon the information provided to them during the trial by both sides. Since the rules of evidence filter the information the factfinder is able to consider, it is not accurate to say that the verdict in a case was based on all facts, circumstances and witnesses to a particular crime. Rather, a verdict is based on all facts, circumstances, and witnesses to a crime the rules of evidence allow the factfinder to hear.
This book, and all H2O books, are Creative Commons licensed for sharing and re-use with the exception of certain excerpts. Any excerpts from the Restatements of the Law, Principles of the Law, and the Model Penal Code are copyright by The American Law Institute. Excerpts are reproduced with permission, not as part of a Creative Commons license.