Opinion ID: 1881795
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Character In Issue Versus Circumstantial Use of Character

Text: However, stating that an accused may present evidence of the deceased's character or reputation for violence is insufficient by itself. Character evidence should be separated into two categories, depending on the purpose for which the evidence is to be used: (1) character used as an ultimate issue in the case, and (2) character used as circumstantial evidence of an act. Substantive law sometimes makes the rights and liabilities of parties depend in part on the existence or nonexistence of a trait of character.... In these cases, character evidence is of course admissible since what is at issue in the case is a character trait, and if the issue is to be resolved on the basis of evidence, evidence of character must be admitted. This principle finds expression in the modern rule that evidence of character is admissible when character or trait of character is an essential element of a claim, charge, or defense. [1A Wigmore, Evidence (Tillers rev.), § 69.1, p. 1457 (emphasis in original).] [On the other hand,] [w]hen character evidence is used circumstantially, the existence of a particular disposition is not itself the matter in issue; rather, evidence of a person's disposition is offered to show the doing or not-doing of an act on a particular occasion.... [T]he accused may ordinarily offer evidence of a pertinent trait of character of the victim, ... but such use of evidence also constitutes circumstantial use of character. [ Id. at 1478.] Where character is in issue, the character of a person may be an element of the crime, claim, or defense. Illustrations include: the competency of the driver in an action for negligently entrusting a motor vehicle to an incompetent driver, or the truthfulness of a person in an action for defamation of the person's allegedly untruthful character. Nevertheless, ... courts often fail to follow the logic of the distinction just describedthough repeatedly chastised by scholars of evidence for failing to do so and not infrequently courts have said ... that character is in issue when such is not the case according to the logic described above.... The same sort of jumbling of categories of character in issue and character as circumstantial evidence is sometimes also apparent in [cases] involving the proof of the character of the victim of a crime.... [1A Wigmore, Evidence (Tillers rev.), § 63.1, p. 1383, n. 1.]