United States v. McRae
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
593 F.2d 700 (1979)
McRae (defendant) admittedly killed his wife with a hunting rifle on a military reservation but claimed the shooting was accidental. At his murder trial, the district court admitted graphic crime-scene photographs showing the victim, bloody, in the chair where she died, including the bullet hole in her head, finding the images highly probative of the parties' relative positions when the gun discharged given McRae's accident defense. The jury convicted McRae, and he appealed, arguing the photographs should have been excluded as unfairly prejudicial under Rule 403.
Whether, under Federal Rule of Evidence 403, a trial court can exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.