so we're continuing to look at the balance between um probative value and prejudicial impact of evidence and remember as we looked at in the hit case in our last video that we only we only are allowed to exclude evidence as hypothetical judges if if that if the prejudicial impact substantially outweighs the probate value very very important to keep that in mind we're looking now specifically at the old chief case and an old chief the defendant's argument is that that the government should not be allowed to introduce the specific nature of the prior felony that makes him liable to be convicted of felon in possession of a weapon the defendant was previously convicted of the crime of assault with bodily injury and for understandable reasons he would rather the jury not hear that he is um guilty of having having hurt someone in the past there are a number of felony felonies that could ironically trigger his right not to be able or to eliminate his right to possess a weapon there are like fraud tax evasion um trapping a long tail lobster out of season uh is actually a felony a federal felony believe it or not um and so he would rather the jury not know what the felony is that leads to him being susceptible to being convicted of being a felon in possession of a weapon so he's willing to stipulate look i was previously convicted of a felony that that qualifies under this statute so if you find that i possessed a weapon then then um i'm guilty and i and i contest that i actually possess this weapon um but um but i don't contest that i'm a felon and that if i do if i did possess the weapon that i would be guilty of the crime because i have i have committed that triggering offense that that um that that prior felony so the question then is once he's offered to make this stipulation is the government still allowed to tell the jury what exactly his prior felony was and in in his in his opinion for the court um justice justice suiter says one thing we have to be really clear on this stipulation doesn't render the the actual prior crime irrelevant that that it may make it less probative because there might be other ways to prove this now that we have both the stipulation and the judgment of conviction for the for the assault with serious bodily injury there might be another way to prove it which makes which makes the need for this particular method of proof less but it doesn't make it any less relevant so this is what i was saying in the last couple of videos very often when we think of evidence as being irrelevant just in sort of like ordinary speaking terms most often what we are saying is that the prejudicial impact of of that evidence uh substantially outweighs any probative value that it might have and here in this case uh the the supreme court says in fact that's true in this case and i keep saying in this case because it's a very limited exception the court holds that as a general matter and this is a huge point for this opinion as a general matter the prosecution gets to tell its story the way it wants to that that he couldn't just stipulate yes i had a gun i'm challenging whether i was a felon or not the court says that the defendant can in this case stipulate to the prior felony because the prior felony is not really a part of the story and the court goes into a great deal of discussion about the expectations of jurors i i'm not sure i buy what the court's saying here particularly when we get to i'll ask you to kind of mark this place and and think about what we're talking about in this context when we get to the impeachment of witnesses and character evidence and how either we can impeach a witness uh with with questions about their past but not go into the into extrinsic evidence of it or how we can um um or how the defendant can present evidence of his good character but only in a very summary routine fashion we haven't gotten into any of those issues yet those are those are later in the class impeachment of witnesses and and defendant's presentation of his good character evidence when we get to both of those we're going to find that courts are very willing to to limit part of the storytelling ability of the defense but you'll find in an old chief the court making a really big deal about the storytelling right of the prosecution and it really it really is an irony with with the difference between the prosecution and the defense in this way but uh but the key thing to take away from this is that the defense i'm sorry that the prosecution isn't in is in fact allowed to tell allowed to tell its story and and in old chief uh the court says there is however a very limited exception here where this won't break that storytelling too much uh such that that it is a violation of rule 403 that when you have the opportunity to simply say he does have a felony ladies and gentlemen of the jury if in fact he possessed this weapon then he's guilty of this crime that's good enough but it would not be good enough to say um we're challenging the prior the gun would be part of the story the defendant could not stipulate away uh the possession of the weapon that would be part of the storytelling narrative um let's say in a in a in a bank robbery case um the um the defendant could not stipulate a way that could not stipulate to the fact that he entered the bank with a gun and then not allow therefore the the teller to testify that she saw him enter the bank with a gun that the court thinks there's something very very protected about the right of the prosecution to tell its story its own way and for that matter for that reason oil chief is an extraordinarily limited uh ruling about the power of the defendant to stipulate something if if what he's stipulating is not an integral integral part of the tale being told then it is then it is something that the defendant can stipulate to and therefore keep the underlying facts uh from coming to the jury and in this case those underlying facts are the prior conviction the key takeaway point from this though is keep remembering that the prejudicial impact has to substantially outweigh the probative value and that there is a very limited exception that old chief recognizes for stipulations that you can always make a deal with the prosecution we'll stipulate to this and then the prosecution can agree not to not to put on the evidence but if the prosecution doesn't agree to take the stipulation as opposed to presenting its own testimony uh on on this question they don't have to they don't have to accept the stipulation in exchange for the testimony most of the time but this is an evolving area of law and so if you're if you're if you find yourself in a situation where stipulation would help you always bring in the principles of the old chief case when you read the first half of the old chief case it's very different than the second half it sounds like what use would this evidence ever have once you've offered a stipulation and then there's the second half of the old chief case that that really is sort of an ode to prosecutorial storytelling uh and and those two parts of the opinion are very much in conflict and so you know if i were if i were a defense lawyer practicing today or or even if i were you know a civil lawyer and as either a plaintiff or defense um and i was trying to keep evidence out i would i would not at all hesitate to use old chief for the proposition that a stipulation makes the the uh the the method of proof for that particular um proposition less relevant and therefore more susceptible to exclusion under 403 but for now understand that old chief is a limited exception but has very a very broad reach theoretically if if a court is willing to sort of run with the ideas uh that old chief offer that that a stipulation at least minimizes uh to some extent the probative value of the underlying facts that you're stipulating