Opinion ID: 2127352
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: description and photograph of co-perpetrator.

Text: Mrs. Boone testified that the female perpetrator was the same woman she had seen in the R & D Food Mart shortly before the robbery. The store had a surveillance camera, and Mrs. Boone was able to identify the woman from the surveillance photographs. She also assisted the sketch artist in preparing a depiction of the woman. The female perpetrator was never identified or charged and, obviously, this was not a joint trial. Nevertheless, the Commonwealth was allowed to introduce into evidence the surveillance camera photographs and the sketch artist's depiction of the woman. Appellant claims the photographs and depiction should have been excluded as irrelevant. We disagree. Implicit in [the concept of relevancy] are two distinct requirements: (1) the evidence must tend to prove the matter sought to be proved; and (2) the matter sought to be proved must be one that is of consequence to the determination of the action. United States v. Waldrip, 981 F.2d 799, 806 (5th Cir.1993). 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. Lawson, supra, § 2.05[3], at 80 (quoting Edward W. Cleary, McCormick on Evidence 542-43 (3d ed.1984)). Appellant's defense was an alibi. The Commonwealth's best evidence was Mrs. Boone's eyewitness identification of Appellant as the male perpetrator. Thus, her credibility, particularly her powers of observation and recall, were at issue. Her ability to identify the female perpetrator as the person she had observed only briefly in the food mart heightened the credibility of her identification of Appellant, a person whom she was able to observe continuously for a period of fifteen to twenty minutes.