Recently, I’ve been posting about relevancy issues that arise with some frequency in North Carolina criminal cases. A final topic in that vein is the relevancy of evidence pertaining to weapons allegedly used in the crime. Suppose for example that the State seeks to introduce evidence of a knife allegedly used in an assault. The knife was found on the defendant’s property. There are no fingerprints on the knife and no other physical evidence links the knife to the crime. However, the State’s medical expert will testify that the depth and width of the victim’s wounds are consistent with the dimensions of the knife and that they could have been caused by the knife. The defendant objects, asserting that because there is no evidence conclusively linking the knife to the crime, any evidence regarding the knife is irrelevant. How should the judge rule on the Rule 401 objection? The cases hold that that for evidence of a weapon allegedly used in a crime to be relevant, the State need not conclusively connect the weapon to the crime. The courts say that the lack of evidence establishing such a conclusive connection goes to weight, not admissibility. Thus, in a fact pattern very similar to my example, evidence of a weapon was held to be relevant. State v. DeCastro, 342 N.C. 667 (1996) (evidence of a knife found three months after the murder in a pond some distance from the scene was relevant; although the knife had no bloodstains and was not tested [...]
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