Also known as: Federal Rule of Evidence · FRE · Fed. R. Evid.
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A body of procedural rules that govern the admissibility of evidence in federal court proceedings. The rules establish standards for relevance, hearsay, character evidence, expert testimony, and other categories of proof while allocating preliminary questions of admissibility to the trial judge.
Francesca Fowler testified at trial that the delivery truck never exceeded the speed limit. Fatima Flores offered Ruby's earlier deposition transcript in which Ruby admitted driving twenty miles over the limit. The court permitted the transcript to contradict Fowler's testimony.
Farid Farahani was charged with arson. The government introduced evidence that Farahani had set a controlled fire on his own vacant warehouse two years earlier. The trial court admitted the evidence after finding sufficient proof that Farahani committed the prior act and that its probative value on intent outweighed unfair prejudice.
Felipe Figueroa sued Fisher Foods after slipping on a wet floor. Fisher Foods offered the deposition of its former store manager taken in an earlier slip-and-fall case. The court admitted the transcript because the manager's statements would have been admissible if he had testified live.
Francisco Frost testified for the defense in a fraud prosecution. The prosecutor asked whether Frost belonged to an organization whose charter required members to protect one another by any means, including false testimony. The court allowed the inquiry to show bias.
Francois Fortier, a key eyewitness, was hospitalized in another state. The court permitted Fortier to testify by contemporaneous video transmission after finding good cause and adequate safeguards for the jury to assess demeanor.
Frostline Textiles was prosecuted for knowingly shipping mislabeled goods. The defense sought to introduce evidence that the shipping clerk was severely intoxicated when labeling the packages. The court excluded the evidence after finding that its probative value was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice under Rules 401 and 403.
On July 12, 1992, respondent James Egelhoff was camping in the Yaak region of northwestern Montana with Roberta Pavola and John Christenson to pick mushrooms. The three sold the mushrooms they had collected and spent the rest of the day and evening drinking in bars and at a private party in Troy, Montana. After leaving the party after 9 p.m. in Christenson's 1974 Ford Galaxy station wagon, the drinking continued, as Egelhoff was seen buying beer at 9:20 p.m. and recalled passing a bottle of Black Velvet with Christenson. Around midnight, officers of the Lincoln County sheriff's department discovered the station wagon stuck in a ditch along U.S. Highway 2. Pavola and Christenson were in the front seat, each dead from a single gunshot to the head. Egelhoff lay in the rear of the car, alive and yelling obscenities, with a blood-alcohol content of .36 percent measured over an hour later. His .38-caliber handgun lay on the floor near the brake pedal with four loaded rounds and two empty casings, and he had gunshot residue on his hands. Egelhoff was charged with two counts of deliberate homicide under Montana law requiring that he purposely or knowingly caused the deaths of another human being. At trial he claimed an unidentified fourth person must have committed the murders, that his extreme intoxication rendered him physically incapable of committing them, and that it accounted for his inability to recall the events. The trial court instructed the jury pursuant to Mont. Code Ann. § 45-2-203 that it could not consider respondent's intoxicated condition in determining the existence of a mental state which is an element of the offense. The jury found Egelhoff guilty on both counts and the court sentenced him to 84 years' imprisonment. The Supreme Court of Montana reversed the convictions. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseThe rules apply to all trials in federal courts, whether civil or criminal and whether tried to a judge or jury.
Over four-fifths of the states have adopted the Federal Rules in one form or another, often with local modifications.
The trial judge determines whether evidence is admissible. Once admitted, the jury decides what weight to give it.
A deposition may be used to the extent it would be admissible if the deponent were present and testifying, provided the opposing party had notice or was represented.
…misleading because of the difficulty in evaluating it.' " Id. at ----, 113 S.Ct. at 2798 (quoting Weinstein, Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence Is Sound; It Should Not Be Amended, 138 F.R.D. 631, 632 (1991)). Federal judges must therefore exclude proffered scientific evidence under Rules 702 and 403 unless they are convinced that…