For the Defense - Volume 1, Issue 3 - 2016 - 41
trial to ensure the fairness of the trial and the
wellbeing of jurors.
A Science-Informed 403 Balance
So, what does defense counsel do with these
scientific findings? They must be pled as a factual
predicate but then placed into a legal construct
to guide the admissibility determination. Because
it is rare that gruesome evidence is the sole means
available for proving a particular point, the
weighing formula developed by the U.S. Supreme
Court in Old Chief v. United States27 offers a principled means of determining admissibility:
On objection, the court would decide whether
a particular item of evidence raised a danger of
unfair prejudice. If it did, the judge would go on
to evaluate the degrees of probative value and
unfair prejudice not only for the item in question
but for any actually available substitutes as well.
If an alternative were found to have substantially
the same or greater probative value but a lower
danger of unfair prejudice, sound judicial discretion would discount the value of the item first
offered and exclude it if its discounted probative
value were substantially outweighed by unfairly
prejudicial risk.28
What does this look like in practice? When a
forensic pathologist needs to describe the point of
entry of a bullet that struck a victim's head, she may
do so with a black and white drawing of a head,
with a Styrofoam model of a head, or a photo from
the autopsy. All three can show, equally, where on
the head the bullet entered, so their probative
value is equal; but the emotional (read "unfairly
prejudicial" or "misleading") impact of the photo
is far greater. Old Chiefs reasoning would follow
the two steps (using a 1 to 10 scale)29 as shown in
Table 1.
Old Chief's command that the court then
"discount the value of the item first offered and
exclude it if its discounted probative value were
substantially outweighed by unfairly prejudicial
risk" would revise the steps as shown in Table 2.
In this formulation, because of the science on
how inflammatory evidence distorts judgment, the
autopsy photo has a discounted probative value
and a high risk of unfair prejudice or misleading the
jury. Thus, the proof would have to be made by the
drawing or the Styrofoam model. Each could tell
the story equally well, but neither risks the same
emotional response as the autopsy photo.
Put more simply, what this test really does
is change the courtroom calculus from "let the
Table 1
Evidence
Black and White
Drawing
Styrofoam
Model of Head
Autopsy Photo
Probative Value
10
10
10
Risk of Prejudice
3-4
3-4
10
Evidence
Black and White
Drawing
Styrofoam
Model of Head
Autopsy Photo
Probative Value
10
10
6-7 [discounted
probative value]
Risk of Prejudice
3-4
3-4
10
Table 2
Vol. 1, Issue 3 | For The Defense
41
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of For the Defense - Volume 1, Issue 3 - 2016
Contents
For the Defense - Volume 1, Issue 3 - 2016 - 1
For the Defense - Volume 1, Issue 3 - 2016 - 2
For the Defense - Volume 1, Issue 3 - 2016 - Contents
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