NCJ Number
116351
Journal
Iowa Law Review Volume: 73 Issue: 2 Dated: (January 1988) Pages: 227-297
Date Published
1988
Length
71 pages
Annotation
This article argues that one principle of evidence law is that a party should present to a tribunal the best evidence that is reasonably available on a litigated factual issue and criticizes judicial decisions that have reasoned from the explicit or implicit premise that no such principle exists.
Abstract
The court of appeals' reasoning in United States v. Gonzalez-Benitez illustrates how courts have denied the existence of the 'best evidence' principle to make certain evidence inadmissible. In this case, the court disallowed taped conversations with informants, rejecting the appellants' argument that the tapes, not the informants' testimony, provided the 'best evidence' of the conversations. This decision reflects the historical shift of scholarly opinion away from a general best-evidence principle and overlooks the fact that the modern decline of the principle is less real and thus less justifiable than is commonly believed. An analysis of the principle's significance for the understanding of many widely recognized rules of evidence also supports the conclusion that such a principle works better as an interpretive device than the alternatives generally used today. 329 footnotes.