Investigation and Evidence Handling: Relevance, Hearsay, and Foundation
Investigation and Evidence Handling tests whether you can gather material properly and then get it admitted. CLE Entrance Exam questions pair a fact pattern with an objection: relevance, hearsay, authentication, or best evidence. The examiner's habit is to test foundation - who can testify to this, what proves this exhibit is what it claims to be, and which exception covers the statement inside the document.
Relevance and its limits
Evidence is relevant if it has any tendency to make a fact of consequence more or less probable; relevant evidence is generally admissible unless a rule excludes it. Character evidence is restricted, and habit evidence is treated differently. Rule 403 permits exclusion where probative value is substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice, confusion, misleading the jury, or wasted time.
Hearsay
Hearsay is an out-of-court statement offered to prove its truth. Statements offered for effect on the listener, as verbal acts, or for impeachment are not hearsay. Rule 801(d) covers certain prior statements and opposing-party admissions. Rule 803 exceptions include present sense impression, excited utterance, and business records - made in the regular course, contemporaneously, by someone with a duty to report. Rule 804 covers dying declarations and statements against interest when the declarant is unavailable.
Authentication and investigation practice
Writings and objects require authentication under Rule 901, typically by a witness with knowledge. Chain of custody matters for fungible items; every transfer is logged. The best evidence rule requires the original writing to prove its contents. Investigators should secure scenes, photograph with a log, obtain signed witness statements, and document every handoff.
Worked example
A hospital bill is offered to prove treatment and cost; the custodian testifies to regular record-keeping, satisfying the business records exception. But a nurse's note recording the patient's own words, the forklift hit me, contains a second layer of hearsay. That inner statement needs its own route in - excited utterance if made under the stress of the event, or an opposing-party admission if offered against the patient. Without one, the note is excluded despite the valid business records foundation.
Traps that cost marks
Applying the best evidence rule to events rather than to the contents of a writing, treating circumstantial evidence as inadmissible, and overlooking gaps in a chain of custody that undercut authentication.