Opinion ID: 2109354
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exclusion of Verna's Statements to the Police

Text: [¶ 14] Verna made statements to the police during four videotaped interviews totalling six hours in length. The State and Junkins' trial counsel agreed that Verna, because of her health, was an unavailable witness for purposes of M.R. Evid. 804(a). The trial court had reviewed the tapes of the interviews, read the transcripts made from those tapes, and found that in response to leading and persistent questioning by the police Verna gave inconsistent answers. The court found that the tapes demonstrated that Verna was suffering from the effects of advanced age and dementia. It concluded that although there was some suggestion in the interviews that Verna admitted killing LaFoe, possibly in self-defense, her statements were not reliable, and the attendant circumstances did not indicate trustworthiness. The court found that Verna's confused and jumbled statements amounted to little more than that she had been present when some altercation took place, that LaFoe and maybe a third person were present, and that she got hurt and ran outside. On the basis of the record before us, we cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion in refusing to admit the videotapes as statements against interest pursuant to Rule 804(b)(3). The court's finding that Verna's statements to the police contained in the videotapes were untrustworthy is supported by the record and is not clearly erroneous. [¶ 15] On the fifth day of trial Junkins requested that the tapes of Verna's interviews be admitted to impeach one of the State's witnesses, Anthony Dorothy. Dorothy testified that Junkins admitted that he had killed LaFoe after an argument and that he put the knife in his grandmother's hands telling her repeatedly that she had hit LaFoe with the knife. [¶ 16] Junkins requested that the court allow the videotapes of Verna's interviews by the police to be shown to the jury for the purpose of impeaching Dorothy's testimony. Counsel asserted that anyone who saw the videotapes would see that Verna was not susceptible to suggestions that she had killed LaFoe and that Junkins, who had read the transcripts, never would have told Dorothy what he did. The court ruled that the videotapes were not admissible to impeach Dorothy because they would take six hours of the jury's time, and it was difficult to understand how the videotapes would impeach Dorothy's testimony. [¶ 17] The court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to admit the videotapes. Having the jury review six hours of interviews of a witness suffering from dementia would have been a waste of time given the dubious proposition that the tapes would tend to impeach Dorothy's testimony. See M.R. Evid. 403. The rationale as to how the tapes would impeach Dorothy was twisting and tortuous, [2] at best, and because it did not appear that impeachment could possibly be the result, it was within the court's discretion to disallow the tapes.