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I'm having trouble figuring out the difference between the appellate standards of clear abuse, de novo, and clearly erroneous. I know that clear abuse is matters that are within the judge's discretion and de novo is matters of law or legal standard. However, I just can't figure out the difference between the two. Here's an example:

Tim wants to offer a writing which X claims is a regularly kept business record of Company Q. Don's witness, Y, claims that it is not a regularly kept record of Company Q. Both X and Y work for Company Q. The judge decides this is not a regularly kept record and excludes it.

To me this seems like it is clearly abuse because it was within the judge's discretion, but apparently here the standard is clearly erroneous.

Any help with understanding this?

IF YOU ARE OL, DON'T ANSWER THIS.

penis

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So the rule is that regularly kept records come in under the applicable exception: the judge doesn't have discretion to keep it out (except on relevance grounds) if it's a business record. If it's not a business record, the judge doesn't have discretion to let it in under that exception. So, whether it comes in turns on the purely factual determination of whether it is, in fact, a business record. Therefore, the decision gets reviewed under the clearly erroneous standard.

By contrast, under 608(b), the court has direction to allow or disallow inquiries into specific incidents of conduct if they are probabtive of truthfulness or untruthfulnes. Here, it's not a factual determination - the judge isn't forced to act one way or the other, but instead makes a judgment call that would be reviewd for abuse of discretion (I use this term instead of "clear abuse")

Just trying to clarify. I can't seem to find an answer to this on TLS...

Someone in my class asked: If a State Supreme Court reverses lower courts' denial of a motion to suppress by determining the facts should have led to suppression, and if the the case makes it to SCOTUS, could one reasonably argue that SCOTUS should uphold State Supreme Court unless it is determined that there was "plain error" in making its factual determination that was different than the lower state courts?

Pardon me if I do not understand appellate review. I not taken Evidence. This hypo came out a crim pro class that actually has been taught more like a professional responsibility course and now that we are actually getting into procedure, I am curious as to the answer. The professor just told the guy to go to his office hours. Thanks for the help.

If the state supreme court used the same facts that the trial court found, but decided that those same facts should have led to a different result, then the state supreme court made a legal determination - this sounds like what you have described.

If the court made that legal determination based on state law grounds, SCOTUS won't touch it at all (since a state supreme court is the final word on the meaning of its state law) unless the U.S. Constitution required a different result, in which case the review would be de novo.

If the state supreme court made the determination based on the federal Constitution, the review would also be de novo. Look at a case like Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648 (1979) as an example. There are some different rules that apply in the habeas corpus / death penalty contexts, involving whether the claimed constitutional error caused real injury to the jury's deliberative process, etc.

If, on the other hand, the state supreme court actually made different factual findings than the trial court (determining that the trial court's findings were clearly erroneous, for example), SCOTUS would apply the clearly erroneous standard to the trial court's findings of fact, without regard to the lower appellate court's findings of fact. See Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, N.C., 470 U.S. 564, 576 (1985) ("The question we must answer, however, is not whether the Fourth Circuit's interpretation of the facts was clearly erroneous, but whether the District Court's finding was clearly erroneous."). The reasoning would go:
1) the lower appellate court made a legal determination (that the trial court's finding was clear error)
2) That legal determination gets a de novo review by the higher court, meaning that he higher court acts as if the intermediate determination was never made
3) The higher court, therefore, has to analyze the trial court findings for clear error if it is to reverse them.