the question that we think we’re asking ourselves when dealing with the admissibility of similar fact evidence is: can we ever reliably move from propensity to relevancy, can we look to recurring past behaviour to ascertain present guilt? this is framed largely as a probability question in theory, but when you go down to the level of hypotheticals when i listen to the class discussion it is the factual matrices that are most contentious. i suspect the real question that we are not dealing with is: what do we mean by similarity in the first place? i’m a comparatist by inclination and genre theorist by training: identifying patterns, saying this thing is like that thing in this or that way, is what i do best. but does another person, given the same events, see them as isolated events or as part of a series? that depends on the parameters and the framing you choose, the narrative you construct, obviously. but we act as if this problem does not exist, and we go straight to the question of probative value and relevancy.
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