Opinion ID: 1274871
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Idaho v. Wright

Text: In Wright, the United States Supreme Court considered the circumstances under which the admission of an unavailable declarant's hearsay statements violates the defendant's constitutional right of confrontation. Wright involved a child molestation prosecution in which the trial court admitted statements made by a 2½-year-old victim to an examining physician. 497 U.S. at 810-11, 110 S.Ct. at 3143-44. The child was not available to testify and be cross-examined at trial, and her statement did not fit into any of the traditional enumerated exceptions to the hearsay rule. The United States Supreme Court held that the trial court had violated the defendant's constitutional rights when it admitted this evidence pursuant to Idaho's residual or catch-all exception to the hearsay rule. Id. at 826-27, 110 S.Ct. at 3152-53. The Wright Court said that the Confrontation Clause permits admission of a non-available declarant's hearsay statement if it falls within a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule. Id. at 815, 110 S.Ct. at 3146-47 (quoting Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 2539, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980)). If the disputed statement does not fall within a firmly rooted hearsay exception, then there must be particularized guarantees of trustworthiness equivalent to those associated with a firmly rooted exception. Id. In evaluating whether adequate guarantees of trustworthiness exist, a court may not look to evidence that corroborates the veracity of the statement. Rather, the court must consider the totality of the circumstances surrounding the making of the statement and determine whether the declarant was so likely to be telling the truth that cross-examination of the declarant would be of marginal utility. Id. at 820, 110 S.Ct. at 3149; cf. Barela, 97 N.M. at 726, 643 P.2d at 290 (recognizing that the reliability of a hearsay statement should rest upon more than corroboration).