Opinion ID: 1405197
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: prior shooting.

Text: Appellant asserts that evidence of the August 15, 2001, confrontation between Reed and Mulazim should have been excluded as irrelevant. We disagree. Evidence is relevant if it has 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. KRE 401. Relevant evidence in a criminal case is any evidence that tends to prove or disprove an element of the offense. Commonwealth v. Mattingly, Ky.App., 98 S.W.3d 865, 869 (2003) (citations omitted). To satisfy the test of relevance, only a slight increase in probability must be shown. Springer v. Commonwealth, Ky., 998 S.W.2d 439, 449 (1999). Furthermore: 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.... 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. Turner v. Commonwealth, Ky., 914 S.W.2d 343, 346 (1996) (citations omitted). The evidence that Mulazim shot Reed on August 15th provided the motive for Reed and Fee to shoot at Mulazim and Appellant on September 14th, which provided the motive for Appellant to shoot and kill Reed on September 15th. Appellant also claims that KRE 404(b) somehow required suppression of this evidence. However, that rule applies only to evidence of prior misconduct by the person against whom the evidence is offered for the purpose of showing that person's subsequent action in conformity therewith. Appellant did not commit the August 15th shooting of Reed. Thus, there is no need for a KRE 404(b) analysis. Springer v. Commonwealth, supra, at 449 n.1 (contention that introduction of sibling's bad acts violates KRE 404(b) implausible).