Opinion ID: 1673753
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Confused rulings on evidence.

Text: Waterbury also argues that trial rulings on admissibility of evidence were so confused and convoluted as to be virtually unintelligible, so that the jury was unable to render a fair and impartial verdict. Most of the difficulty resulted from trial court's policy of overruling certain hearsay objections to statements allegedly made by Joslyn, subject to being connected up, that is, subject to an independent showing of a conspiracy that would allow the admission of the statements under the coconspirator's exception. The problem was compounded because even though the court had sustained Waterbury's Motion for Bifurcated Proceedings some witnesses had to be taken out of order when jury selection took far longer than anticipated. In any event, the conditional rulings ultimately were resolved against Waterbury and the evidence was held admissible against him after the court determined there was sufficient independent proof of the conspiracy. Thus if the jury ultimately was unclear that certain statements were admissible as to Waterbury, he could not have been prejudiced. We find no reversible error here.