Opinion ID: 2222288
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Defendant's Letter

Text: Defendant next contends that the trial court erred in admitting into evidence State's Exhibit 61A, a handwritten letter addressed to Mom and signed by the defendant. Police received the letter from Michael Games, the defendant's brother, on July 17, three days after the victim's murder. The letter reads in part as follows: to Mom I love you vere mush mom but I didton woit to kill hem I sore mom woat i put you thyoo. I cant do that mash time i cant do it. so i no woat todo whit my sailfe. I dod desove to live i no you are a sham a me. I dod banm you mom. good bey Mom love you vere vere mush /s/ Jimmy Games Defendant argues that because the letter does not indicate who, if anyone, defendant was sorry for killing, the letter was of no probative value to the question of defendant's guilt and merely invited undue jury speculation. Probative value is the tendency of evidence to establish the proposition that it is offered to prove. McCormick on Evidence § 185, at 541 (Cleary 3d ed. 1984). In his discussion of probative value, Professor Cleary states: Under our system, molded by the tradition of jury trial and predominantly oral proof, a party offers his evidence not en masse, but item by item. An item of evidence, being but a single link in the chain of proof, need not prove conclusively the proposition for which it is offered. It need not even make that proposition appear more probable than not. Whether the entire body of one party's evidence is sufficient to go the jury is one question. Whether a particular item of evidence is relevant to his case is quite another. It is enough if the item could reasonably show that a fact is slightly more probable than it would appear without that evidence. Even after the probative force of the evidence is spent, the proposition for which it is offered still can seem quite improbable. Thus, the common objection that the inference for which the fact is offered does not necessarily follow is untenable. It poses a standard of conclusiveness that very few single items of circumstantial evidence ever could meet. A brick is not a wall. McCormick on Evidence, supra, at 542-43. These observations are congruent with our holding in Waters v. State (1981), 275 Ind. 182, 415 N.E.2d 711, where a state witness in a murder prosecution testified that he had overheard defendant tell his father, You don't have to worry about the money. It's all taken care of. Despite defendant's objection that the testimony was irrelevant and immaterial, we held that the statement tended to indicate that the defendant had taken care of the problem of the debt by killing the victim to avoid payment; thus it was properly admitted under the party admission exception to the hearsay rule. Likewise, we must here reject the notion that the letter was without probative value. The letter clearly manifests a consciousness of guilt and contains statements by the defendant which, when taken in conjunction with other evidence, may lead to a logical inference that defendant was referring to the victim in this case. Defendant has cited no authority, nor can we find any, in support of the proposition that for a statement to be admissible, a person referred to in the statement must be identified by name. Defendant has appropriately conceded that the letter was properly authenticated by a handwriting expert who compared the letter to handwriting exemplars known to have been written by the defendant. The letter therefore constituted an admission and was properly admitted into evidence under the party admission exception to the hearsay rule.