A motion in limine is a request to exclude evidence from being presented by the opponent during a trial. It is not an absolute prohibition but a procedure to avoid prejudice to the jury. The purpose is to avoid a trial situation where evidence is offered and then ruled inadmissible after the jury has already heard it. The motion is usually filed before trial, and any objected evidence must be made outside the jury’s hearing.
A motion in limine is a procedural device by which one of the parties to a lawsuit requests the court to exclude certain evidence from being presented by the opponent during a trial. The basis for granting this request may be that the evidence provided is irrelevant or highly prejudicial. A motion in limine is not an absolute prohibition on the admissibility of the evidence offered, but rather a procedure to avoid prejudice to a jury before the panel makes a final ruling on its admissibility.
One purpose of a limine motion is to avoid a trial situation in which one party first offers evidence, and then rules on its admissibility, after the jury has already heard that the evidence exists. Under these circumstances, in terms of impact, the evidentiary cat has already been let out of the bag. Even if a judge decides that the evidence should be dismissed, regardless of his instructions to the jury that they are to ignore the existence of the evidence, some jurors may make negative and prejudicial inferences.
A limine motion is usually filed by one party before trial. The party asking to rule on the inadmissibility of certain evidence will indicate the reasons why it should be excluded. In general, evidentiary rules may prohibit the offering of certain evidence because its probative value is greatly outweighed by the detrimental impact on one of the parties. For example, in the context of a criminal trial, a defendant’s attorney may seek to foreclose evidence of his client’s felony allegations on the grounds that its probative value is somewhat limited, but its prejudicial effect may be large .
In the event that the prosecutor, in the course of the trial, first announces to the judge that he wants to record the felony convictions as evidence, but the records are not admitted, the benefit of the exclusion sentence is somewhat diminished, because the jury has already heard talk about the existence of the allegations of wrongdoing. For these reasons, the single most important procedural aspect of a limine motion is that any evidence offered, which is objected to by the opponent, must be made outside the jury hearing. This can take place both in court and in the judge’s chambers, at which time the judge will rule on its admissibility.
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