The defense countered that the allegations were concocted so A. T. would not be returned to her father, who had primary physical custody. A. T. testified at the trial, and, in order to rebut the implicit charge that her testimony was motivated by a desire to live with her mother, the Government presented six witnesses who recounted out of court statements that A. T. made about the alleged assault while she was living with her mother. Tome was convicted, and the Court of Appeals affirmed, adopting the Government's argument that A. T.'s statements were admissible even though they had been made after her alleged motive to fabricate arose. Reasoning that the premotive requirement is a function of relevancy, not the hearsay rules, the court balanced A. T.'s motive to lie against the probative value of one of the statements and determined that the District Court had not erred in admitting the statements. The Rule's language speaks of rebutting charges of recent fabrication and improper influence and motive to the exclusion of other forms of impeachment, and it bears close similarity to the language used in many of the common law premotive requirement cases.
Hearsay evidence is often relevant.
But if relevance were the sole criterion of admissibility, it would be difficult to account for the Rules' general proscription of hearsay testimony or the traditional analysis of hearsay that the Rules, for the most part, reflect. The Government's reliance on academic commentators critical of excluding a witness' out of court statements is also misplaced. The Advisory Committee rejected the balancing approach such commentators proposed when the Rules were adopted. The instant case illustrates some of the important considerations supporting the foregoing interpretation. Permitting the introduction of prior statements as substantive evidence to rebut every implicit charge that a witness' in court testimony results from recent fabrication or improper influence or motive would shift the trial's whole emphasis to the out of court, rather than the in court, statements.