Greetings fellow board members. I'm new new to this board and am unsure if my question is being posted in the correct place, but seeing as I am an Arizona resident, and attending school in Arizona, and I'm in a justice/pre-law program, I felt this was most appropriate.

My question involves the rules of evidence and need clarification regarding terminology pursuant to the following question, which was asked of me during an adjudication class:

"What is meant by trustworthiness of evidence under the rules of evidence? How is trustworthiness determined and how valid is that determination?"

The element in question is the term "trustworthiness of evidence." Although I am naturally inquisitive of the law, and a motivated student, I feel that I have reached my limitations in attempting to define the term and correctly answer the question. When posed this question, I immediately turned to the FRE for the answer. However, I failed to find this term used anywhere in the text. I did happen to find information regarding evidentiary relevance in article IV and who determines this, but nothing addressing "trustworthiness" or even credibility. I also looked to the class textbook, which vaguely stated that the judge determines "relevance and trustworthiness", however, left no citation or reference.

Much against my instinct, I am left to assume that the poser of the question, as well as the author of the textbook, are using the terms "relevance" and "trustworthiness", synonymously. Should I look at this from a logical reasoning point of view, I would conclude that, if a judge deems evidence as irrelevant, and untrustworthy evidence is irrelevant to a case, then evidentiary relevance and evidentiary trustworthiness are synonymous terms. However, I am unsure if this is a reasonable argument to conclude since my experience with the law is rather infantile at this point.

With this in mind, I am turning to the experts to assist me in unraveling the following question:

"Can I use the terms 'trustworthiness' and 'relevance' synonymously to correctly answer the question if using the FRE as a reference?"

Thank you very much for your time.

-IJ