Court Opinion

ID: 9842701
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:13:32.30926+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:28.261291
License: Public Domain

SELYA, Circuit Judge,
with whom LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Senior Circuit Judge, joins (concurring).
I write separately, not because I harbor reservations about the result reached in this case, but because I fear that the court’s opinion may be read by some to recalibrate *7the balance that Fed.R.Evid. 403 demands. I have three qualms.
First: I think that the court, in endeavoring to distinguish between the fact of a prior conviction and the basic facts necessary to give that conviction content, suggests an uncomfortably cramped — and somewhat artificial — definition of relevance. In my view, the disputed evidence is relevant — albeit perhaps marginally so — but nonetheless inadmissible under a proper application of Rule 403.
Second: I question the court’s approach to Rule 403 in this situation. The rule does not state, nor should it be construed to mean, that prejudicial evidence may be admitted at trial only if its harmful effect is substantially outweighed by its relevance. Rather, the presumption works the other way, mandating the admissibility of relevant evidence unless good reason appears for its exclusion. See United States v. Foley, 871 F.2d 235, 238 (1st Cir.1989). The court here seems to reverse this presumption, see, e.g., ante at 4, 5, thereby putting the shoe on the wrong foot.
Third: I fervently believe that the Rule 403 balance is best struck on a case by case basis, and that, in almost all instances, the strikers of the balance should be the district courts as opposed to the court of appeals. See, e.g., Freeman v. Package Mach. Co., 865 F.2d 1331, 1340 (1st Cir.1988) (“Only rarely — and in extraordinarily compelling circumstances — will we, from the vista of a cold appellate record, reverse a district court’s on-the-spot judgment concerning the relative weighing of probative value and unfair effect.”). I worry that today’s opinion undervalues this discretion and that the court’s words, though correct in the context of the case before us, may be taken by some as a command that will prompt the district courts to miero-manage trials and thereby dispense justice of a superficial variety (which is to say, dispense injustice). In the last analysis, a trial is not an exercise in computer science, but, rather, a recreation of flesh-and-blood events for the edification of the factfinder. The law is not so fastidious as to demand that all taste be squeezed from a piece of evidence before a jury can chew on it. To the contrary, although “[a] controlled environment for the reception of proof is essential, ... an artificially sterile environment is neither necessary nor desirable.” Wagenmann v. Adams, 829 F.2d 196, 217 (1st Cir.1987).
In sum, while I agree that this is the rare situation in which evidence, though relevant, is unfairly prejudicial and must be excluded, and while I share many of Judge Coffin’s sentiments, I think the district courts would be well advised to avoid any attempt to extrapolate a general rule from the court’s case-specific holding.