Opinion ID: 2336124
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: evidence of the first accident.

Text: On January 29, 1999, Appellant filed an objection to consolidating his trial with that of William Shaw, the driver who was at fault in the first accident and who was subsequently indicted for several of the same offenses. Appellant successfully prevented the consolidation of the two trials; however, he now complains that the trial court impermissibly precluded him from introducing evidence of Shaw's culpability at his (Appellant's) trial. Specifically, Appellant wanted to introduce evidence that Shaw was indicted for some of the same offenses and that Shaw was drunk when he improperly merged onto Watterson Expressway and caused the first accident. The trial court ruled this evidence was irrelevant to the issue of Appellant's guilt or innocence. We agree. A trial court's decision on a relevancy issue is reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard. Commonwealth v. English, supra, at 945. KRE 401 states `[r]elevant evidence' means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. Here, neither the fact that Shaw was drunk when he started the series of events leading up to Appellant's accident nor the fact that Shaw was later indicted for similar offenses makes Appellant's own guilt more or less probable. The jury was advised of the most salient fact with regard to Shaw's involvement, i.e., that the victims of Appellant's conduct were present in the expressway because another accident had occurred just prior to Appellant reaching the scene.