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The Rules of Admissibility: Relevance

المؤلف:  Max M. Houck، Jay A. Siegel

المصدر:  Fundamentals of Forensic Science

الجزء والصفحة:  630

2026-09-09

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The Rules of Admissibility: Relevance

Relevance has two components: materiality and probativeness. RELEVANCE = MATERIALITY + PROBATIVENESS

If evidence is material, it means that it applies to a matter dealing with the case at hand, and not some other case. As an example of materiality, assume that a man is on trial for injuring another person with a knife during a street robbery. Evidence that the accused had a stash of stolen guns at his home at the time might indicate that he was violent or that he liked to sell guns, but it would not be material to the robbery charge. The other component of relevance is probativeness. Evidence is probative if it tends to make a fact or issue more or less probable than if the evidence were not present. Another way of expressing this is, does the evidence tend to prove something about a fact at issue in this case? Let’s take the example of a man who is arrested on suspicion of distribution of methamphetamine. A search warrant is issued to search his home. No methamphetamine is found, but the police uncover a large number of plastic bags, a postal scale, a large bag of a material that is commonly used as a diluent for drugs, and a book that describes in detail how methamphetamine is made. Is this evidence probative? Most certainly it is. Although it doesn’t prove by itself that the accused is a drug dealer, it tends to make this assertion more probable. So, we can see that the test for relevance is two-pronged. The evidence at issue must be both material and probative in order for it to be considered relevant. But this is only half the story. Even if evidence is highly relevant, it may still be inadmissible because it lacks competence.