California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from People v. Palmer, C082573 (Cal. App. 2018):
Finally, defendant claims the court violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process and his Sixth Amendment rights to a jury trial, to confront witnesses, and to present a defense by excluding his proposed third-party culpability evidence. The federal Constitution gives trial court judges the discretion to exclude evidence if its probative value is outweighed by its prejudicial effect. (Holmes v. South Carolina (2006) 547 U.S. 319, 326 [164 L.Ed.2d 503, 510] ["well-established rules of evidence permit trial judges to exclude evidence if its probative value is outweighed by certain other factors such as unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or potential to mislead the jury"].) Exercise of
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discretion only violates due process if a judge's error makes the trial fundamentally unfair. (People v. Partida (2005) 37 Cal.4th 428, 439.) As discussed above, we conclude the trial court did not err in balancing the evidence, so there is no due process violation.
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