Case Name: Douglas WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee
Court: Supreme Court of Indiana
Jurisdiction: Indiana
Decision Date: 1989-12-04
Citations: 546 N.E.2d 1198
Docket Number: No. 45S00-8808-CR-778
Parties: Douglas WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.
Judges: SHEPARD, C.J., concurs with separate opinion.
Reporter: North Eastern Reporter 2d
Volume: 546
Pages: 1198–1203

Head Matter:
Douglas WILLIAMS, Appellant, v. STATE of Indiana, Appellee.
No. 45S00-8808-CR-778.
Supreme Court of Indiana.
Dec. 4, 1989.
Maree Gonzalez, Jr., Appellate Div., Crown Point, for appellant.
Linley E. Pearson, Atty. Gen. of Indiana, Richard C. Webster, Deputy Atty. Gen., Indianapolis, for appellee.

Opinion:
GIVAN, Justice.
A jury trial resulted in the conviction of appellant of Murder, for which he received a sentence of thirty (30) years.
The facts are: On September 1, 1987, shortly after 1:30 a.m., Steven Wahl and his girlfriend, Susan Jemenko, were aroused by their neighbor, appellant in this case, ringing their doorbell. Appellant requested that Wahl call an ambulance. He stated that he had accidentally shot his wife and that she was bleeding.
After the ambulance was called, appellant drove to the Procare Ambulance Company and roused the personnel. He told them that he had shot his wife and that it was an accident. The Procare Ambulance attendants followed appellant back to his home, arriving at about the same time as the Calumet Township ambulance arrived in response to the previous call. As the ambulance personnel entered the home, appellant's 3-year-old daughter appeared and asked them, "Are you here to help my mommy? I think my mommy's dead. My daddy shot her."
Appellant's sole assignment of error is that the trial court erred in permitting witnesses to testify as to the statement of the 3-year-old child that her father had shot her mother. Appellant argues that the utterances of the child do not fit the required format for the excited utterance exception to the hearsay rule. Appellant claims there was too much time lapse between the shooting and the utterance of the child. Although several minutes had passed since the firing of the shot, the 3-year-old child had been left alone with her mortally wounded mother. There is ample evidence here to support the conclusion that insofar as the child was concerned, the event was on-going and she was in an excited state of concern for her mother's welfare. See Jones v. State (1986), Ind., 500 N.E.2d 1166.
Appellant also contends the excited utterance should not have been admitted because the child was only three years of age and thus could not have qualified as a competent witness in her own right. Appellant does not cite us to any authority for this proposition. In this type of situation, regardless of the age of the person making the utterance, we are concerned only with the spontaneity of the utterance and not with the speaker's general qualifications as a witness. McCormick on Evidence § 297 (3d ed. 1984).
We have held that the statement must be a spontaneous result of the event rather than a result of reflective thought. Corder v. State (1984), Ind., 467 N.E.2d 409. It is doubtful that a 3-year-old child alone with her mortally wounded mother would have engaged in independent thought sufficient to fabricate a statement to be made to others. We hardly can postulate any hypothetical presenting a more spontaneous utterance by a human being.
Appellant also states there was no evidence that the child actually witnessed the shooting. One hardly could conceive otherwise in view of her presence at the scene and the statement which she made.
Even if we would assume for the sake of argument that the court should not have permitted the ambulance attendants to testify concerning the child's statement, it nevertheless is clear that the child's statement added nothing to what already had been placed in evidence. In fact, there was never any question in this case whether appellant fired the fatal shot. When he went to his neighbors for help, he stated that he had fired the shot but that it was an accident. He made the same statement when he went directly to the ambulance company to elicit their assistance.
The child made the bare statement that her daddy shot her mommy. Her statement in no way contradicted appellant's own statements concerning the shooting. The child made no attempt to elaborate on the shooting or characterize it as deliberate or accidental. We can perceive no prejudice and thus no reversible error resulting from the admission of the child's statement. McKim v. State (1985), Ind., 476 N.E.2d 503.
The trial court is affirmed.
SHEPARD, C.J., concurs with separate opinion.
PIVARNIK, J., concurs.
DeBRULER, J., concurs in result with separate opinion in which DICKSON, J., concurs.