Opinion ID: 1891349
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Admission into evidence of message written by defendant's wife.

Text: Exhibit 35 was the urgent note left at Peters' back door, instructing him to come to the Fuhrmann home. The State proved it was written by Marsha, defendant's wife. Defendant objected to admission of exhibit 35 several times on the ground the testimony is that Exhibit 35 is not the handwriting of this defendant, and that the person who wrote Exhibit 35 is not on trial at this time    for the further reason it is immaterial, actually irrelevant to any issue in this case. A writing is not necessarily inadmissible merely because it is not written by defendant. Defendant may have thought the exhibit was hearsay and not admissible as an admission because it was not written by the defendant. But this reasoning was not articulated to the trial court. The first portion of defendant's objection was inadequate to alert trial court to any ground sufficient to exclude the offered exhibit. See State v. Welsh, 245 N.W.2d 290, 295 (Iowa 1976). The second portion of the objection was that the note was irrelevant and immaterial. This objection was sufficient to raise the issue of the probative value of this evidence in relation to the purpose for which it was offered. Wiedenfeld v. Chicago & N. W. Transp. Co., 252 N.W.2d 691, 699 (Iowa 1977); State v. Clay, 213 N.W.2d 473, 477 (Iowa 1973). Of course, a determination as to relevancy and materiality rests largely in trial court's discretion. Wiedenfeld, supra; Trushcheff v. AbellHowe Co., 239 N.W.2d 116, 125 (Iowa 1976). The distinction between materiality and relevancy is drawn in Trushcheff, supra, and Vine Street Corp. v. City of Council Bluffs, 220 N.W.2d 860, 862 (Iowa 1974), and will not be repeated here. The major issue in this case was whether defendant had participated in the jewel robbery. It was therefore pertinent to inquire about the location of the missing jewels. Because these were discovered in Peters' possession, it became important to examine any link between defendant and Peters relating to transfer of the stolen goods. The note written by defendant's wife established a connection between defendant and Peters, and thus was material to the main issue in dispute. See Vine Street Corp. v. City of Council Bluffs, supra, 220 N.W.2d at 862. We also view the note as relevant because it made Peters' story more probable than it would have been without the evidence. See Wiedenfeld, supra, 252 N.W.2d at 699; In re Estate of Poulos, 229 N.W.2d 721, 726 (Iowa 1975). Trial court properly overruled defendant's objection to exhibit 35.