Tennessee Criminal Lawyer Blog

Evidentiary rules are one of the more difficult aspects of law practice to master. In fact, case after case has proven that when defendants decide to go ahead with a case pro se (representing themselves), evidentiary issues present such defendants the most problems and seems to be where they make the most mistakes at trial. Our next few blogs will pick out a few key evidentiary issues in order to show how perplexing they can be and why a defendant may want to hire an experienced criminal defense attorney to represent them at trial so they do not have to bother themselves with trying to master such topics.

One confusing area of evidence is character evidence. In this blog, we will only discuss character evidence as it pertains to criminal cases since this is in fact a criminal law blog. In criminal cases, the most important rule to remember regarding character evidence is that such evidence cannot be used to prove that defendant engaged in conduct in conformity therewith. Huh? This simply means that if the defendant is on trial for murder, evidence cannot be presented that purports to prove that the defendant has a character for violence and thus must have committed the crime in question. The concern with character evidence then, is that the jury will view the defendant in a poor light and convict him based on their opinion of the defendant rather than the strength of the actual relevant evidence presented.

There is an exception regarding the use of character evidence that basically allows the defendant’s character to be attacked if the defendant first tries to present evidence that he has good character (called “opening the door”) or attacks the character of the victim or a witness. Thus, the decision that the defendant must make regarding whether to open the door is a critical one that will greatly affect which evidence will be admitted at trial and which evidence will be kept out. The defendant would be wise to have skilled legal counsel assisting with the case in order to correctly weigh the pros and cons of such a decision.