The right to due process guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments prohibits the exclusion of probative exculpatory evidence in criminal trials when exclusion of such evidence is unreasonable, arbitrary, or disproportionate.

United States v. Gregg, 451 F.3d 930, 934-935 (8th Cir. 2008) (upholding trial court's exclusion of evidence of specific instances of victim's prior violent conduct to prove victim was the aggressor because such evidence is not an essential element of a charge, claim, or defense).When an exception makes the victim's character admissible, the testimony of a witness on direct examination about the victim's character must take the form of opinion or reputation and it cannot take the form of specific instances of victim's conduct.

United States v. Jordan, 509 F.3d 191, 202-203 (4th Cir. 2007) (upholding trial court's admission of witness Brown's statements to her friend Adams as statements against penal interest because Brown's statements which....A statement falls within the federal hearsay exception for statements against interest only if the statement at the time of its making so far contrary to the declarant's pecuniary or proprietary interest, or so far tended to subject the declarant to civil or criminal liability, or to render invalid a claim by the declarant against another, that a reasonable person in the declarant's position would not have made the statement unless believing it to be true.

United States v. Shearer, 379 F.3d 453, 456 (7th Cir. 2004) (upholding trial court's admission of witnesses' testimony about accused's prior bad acts of selling display fireworks where such evidence was offered to prove accused's "intent to deal by demonstrating that [accused] engaged in...Evidence of a criminal or wrongful act apart from the act that at issue at trial Is not barred by the prohibition against circumstantial use of character if intent, knowledge, mistake, or accident is a legally-material factual issue, the opposing party suggests the non-existence of knowledge or urges mistake or accident as a defense, and evidence of another crime, wrong, or act is offered to prove the knowledge or the absence of mistake or accident by a criminal defendant or other person.