Opinion ID: 830735
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the spontaneity requirement of mre 803a

Text: Hearsay is a statement, other than the one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. [17] Hearsay is generally prohibited and may only be admitted at trial if provided for in an exception to the hearsay rule. [18] MRE 803A provides just such an exception for a child's statement regarding sexual assault in certain circumstances. The rule provides: A statement describing an incident that included a sexual act performed with or on the declarant by the defendant or an accomplice is admissible to the extent that it corroborates testimony given by the declarant during the same proceeding, provided: (1) the declarant was under the age of ten when the statement was made; (2) the statement is shown to have been spontaneous and without indication of manufacture; (3) either the declarant made the statement immediately after the incident or any delay is excusable as having been caused by fear or other equally effective circumstance; and (4) the statement is introduced through the testimony of someone other than the declarant. If the declarant made more than one corroborative statement about the incident, only the first is admissible under this rule. A statement may not be admitted under this rule unless the proponent of the statement makes known to the adverse party the intent to offer the statement, and the particulars of the statement, sufficiently in advance of the trial or hearing to provide the adverse party with a fair opportunity to prepare to meet the statement. [19] MRE 803A, which codified the common-law tender years exception, is also an exception to the prohibition against the use of hearsay testimony to bolster the credibility of a witness. [20] Relevant to this appeal, MRE 803A plainly requires the declarant's original statement to have been spontaneous. The Michigan Rules of Evidence do not define spontaneous. As when construing statutes, in the absence of a specific definition of a common term used in an evidentiary rule, it is appropriate to look to the dictionary definition to discern the term's ordinary and generally accepted meaning. [21] Spontaneous is defined as: (1) coming or resulting from natural impulse or tendency; without effort or premeditation; natural and unconstrained; unplanned; (2) of a person: giving to acting on sudden impulse. [22] The standards for spontaneity have been well litigated. The leading case on this issue in Michigan is People v. Dunham , a decision of the Court of Appeals holding that statements made in response to customary, open-ended questions may be considered spontaneous. [23] In Dunham , a child was asked questions by an adult mediator during the child's parents' divorce. The questions were generally innocuous and customarily asked of all children participating in divorce mediation, yet the child in Dunham responded with allegations of sexual abuse. Virtually every Court of Appeals decision (including the panel in this case) has applied Dunham when examining the issue of spontaneity, although the holding has been broadened to stand for the general proposition that statements made in response to questioning may be considered spontaneous. [24] Until this case, this Court has not itself discussed or defined the parameters under which a statement can be spontaneous for the purposes of MRE 803A. [25] Other states' courts and the federal courts have addressed the issue of spontaneity as well; their decisions may be classified into separate groups for our purposes here. The most recognizable spontaneous statements are those that arise out of pure impulsethat is, they are made by the declarant without prompt, plan, or questioning. This type of impulsive statement is prototypically spontaneous because it appears to come out of nowhere or out of the blue. For example, in People v. Bowers, [26] the Colorado Supreme Court held that a child's statements were spontaneous where she made unexpected allegations of sexual abuse with no questioning or prompting from the adult. There, a babysitter was changing the child's brother's diaper when the child pointed to her brother's penis and said that her father `had one just like that but it was bigger and he hurts me with it' and the child also said to a foster care program coordinator that `I don't like boneys ... I don't like Daddy to put his boney on me.' [27] The Court held that the statements were made spontaneously without prompting or suggesting. [28] Statements that are made as a result of prompt, plan, or questioning by a third party, yet are in some manner atypical, unexpected, or do not logically follow from the prompt are also widely considered spontaneous. This type of non sequitur statement is generally considered spontaneous because it shows that the declarant was acting from natural impulses or tendencies by responding atypically to what may otherwise have been innocent prompts. For example, in State v. Aaron L., [29] the Connecticut Supreme Court held that the victim's statement showed spontaneity and consistency, and was therefore sufficiently reliable to be admissible under Connecticut's residual exception to the hearsay rule. There, the child's statement, `I'm not going to tell you that I touch daddy's pee-pee,' did not logically relate to the event that preceded ither mother admonishing the victim that it was not nice to grope her breast. [30] A third category that poses closer questions involves cases where statements are given as a result of open-ended and nonleading questions that include answers or information outside the scope of the questions themselves. Often, this type of unplanned yet responsive statement may be considered spontaneous because the information that results is based on knowledge independent of that provided in the question. For example, in State v. Shafer, the Washington Supreme Court held that where the child without prompting told her mother about encounters with the defendant and the child's mother then inquired further, while the child's statements in response to her mother's questioning were not entirely spontaneous, they were not the result of leading questions or a structured interrogation and were thus admissible. [31] Similarly, the decision in McCafferty v. Leapley [32] demonstrates how a spontaneous statement may arise out of simple questioning or innocent prompting. There, the child's statements about how her `daddy' sucked on her neck were given spontaneously in response to a nonleading question about how she got the mark on her neck. Her statements about this were consistent with what she told others and with what she demonstrated on [the adult's] own neck and with [the adult's] playroom dolls.... [It was also the child] who volunteered in play statements such as `this is how she could sit on her daddy's weenie.' [33] The aforementioned Michigan Court of Appeals decision in Dunham  holding that statements resulting from open-ended, nonleading questions may be spontaneousis another prime example of this type of statement. Statements falling within this last category, however, are also the type that are most likely to be nonspontaneous, and thus deserve extra scrutiny by trial courts before they may be admitted. When examining statements that have some of the same characteristics as GA's statements here, many courts have found a lack of spontaneity. The analysis they employed is informative for our purposes here. For example, the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision in State v. D.G. provides a useful comparison. [34] There, the court concluded that there was not a `probability that the statement [was] trustworthy' as required by New Jersey's applicable rule, because the situation under which [the child] disclosed the sexual abuse was very stressful and the child did not spontaneously divulge information concerning the assault to the adult, but rather the adult interrogated her after finding her performing questionable acts while at play. [35] Interrogation, aggressive or leading questioning, and similar factual scenarios may all work to eliminate the spontaneity of a declarant's statement, which would thus render it inadmissible in the MRE 803A context.
Having examined these principles of hearsay and the requirement of spontaneity generally, we must determine the parameters of this requirement in Michigan for the purposes of MRE 803A. We hold that MRE 803A generally requires the declarant-victim to initiate the subject of sexual abuse. The question of spontaneity, at its essence, asks whether the statement is the creation of the child or another. There is certainly no doubt that the types of impulsive or non sequitur statements described above should be considered spontaneous for the purposes of MRE 803A because they result from the declarant's natural impulse or tendency or are unplanned and made without effort or premeditation, as a common definition of spontaneity provides. Such statements are quintessentially the creation of the child-declarant, and are thus certainly admissible under MRE 803A, assuming they meet the rule's other requirements. This case, on the other hand, requires that we address the closer question: whether prompts from adults render a child's responsive statement inadmissible. This type of statement most often arises in the context of questioning by an adult. We hold that the mere fact that questioning occurred is not incompatible with a ruling that the child produced a spontaneous statement. However, for such statements to be admissible, the child must broach the subject of sexual abuse, and any questioning or prompts from adults must be nonleading or open-ended in order for the statement to be considered the creation of the child. To be clear, we do not hold that any questioning by an adult automatically renders a statement nonspontaneous and thus inadmissible under MRE 803A. Open-ended, nonleading questions that do not specifically suggest sexual abuse do not pose a problem with eliciting potentially false claims of sexual abuse. [36] But where the initial questioning focuses on possible sexual abuse, the resultant answers are not spontaneous because they do not arise without external cause. When questioning is involved, trial courts must look specifically at the questions posed in order to determine whether the questioning shaped, prompted, suggested, or otherwise implied the answers. This approach requires that trial courts review the totality of the circumstances surrounding the statement in order to determine the issue of spontaneity. Even though courts should look at the surrounding circumstances and larger context in order to understand whether the statement was spontaneously made, we note that this review is not solely determinative of the question of admissibility. As MRE 803A requires, the statement must be shown to have been spontaneous and without indication of manufacture. [37] The language of MRE 803A(2) clearly demonstrates that spontaneity is an independent requirement of admissibility rather than one factor that weighs in favor of reliability or admissibility. [38] Thus, even if, considering the totality of the circumstances, the trial court determines that a statement is spontaneous for the purposes of MRE 803A(2), it must nevertheless also conduct the separate analyses necessary to determine whether the statement meets the other independent requirements of MRE 803A. Turning to the facts of this case, we do not conclude that GA's statements were spontaneously given. Morgan directed GA to sit on Lori's lap, whereupon Morgan, Lori, or both questioned GA about sexual abuse. Morgan testified that she specifically broached the subject of sexual abuse on her initiative, questioning and otherwise probing GA for details. According to her trial testimony, Morgan asked GA numerous questions, including whether anyone had been touching her, Has anyone ever touched your private places? Where have you been touched? Who touched you? and, after identifying defendant, How did he touch you? What did he touch you with? There is simply no indication in this case that GA would have made the statements she made or even broached the subject of sexual abuse if not otherwise prompted and, indeed, directly questioned by Morgan. Moreover, the testimony indicates that GA hesitated for quite a while before making the first statement; this tends to suggest that GA did not come forth with her statements on her own initiative, and thus that the statements were not necessarily products of her creation. More troubling, Morgan specifically suggested defendant's name to GA in a list of possible perpetrators. These facts demonstrate that GA's statements were not spontaneously given, nor did they arise out of an otherwise innocent conversation or set of nonleading and open-ended questions. Although there were concededly spontaneous elements in GA's statements, this is insufficient to establish the general kind of spontaneity the rule requires. The Court of Appeals below concluded that on balance the statements were primarily spontaneous by focusing not on who broached the subject of sexual abuse, but instead on the nature of some of the questions that were open-ended, the degree of voluntariness GA displayed in answering questions and providing details not necessarily evident by the nature of the questions, and the physical reactions that GA exhibited as a result of the questioning. In this sense, the statements had spontaneous elements inasmuch as the answers were given without premeditation, some answers seemed unplanned, and some of her responses were natural and impulsiveand this is true even if GA's statements were given in response to direct questions. Nevertheless, when considering the questions in their entirety, we cannot conclude that GA's responses were, on the whole, spontaneous. As noted, because spontaneity is an independent requirement under MRE 803A(2)LQ rather than one factor that weighs in favor of reliability and therefore admissibility, an overall sense of reliability or trustworthiness cannot render nonspontaneous statements admissible under MRE 803A. In deciding that GA's statements are inadmissible, we must be clear that we do not expect a parent or other concerned adult not trained in the delicate nature of questioning a child regarding sexual abuse to recognize the danger of influencing a child's responses with the type of questioning used here. Nor do we expect that most parents or adults would treat this situation casually in order to allow the child to come forward with a spontaneous statement. Indeed, quite the contrary is likely to be true: it is perfectly natural for a parent or other concerned adult to engage in direct questioning or seek as much information as possible if his suspicions are aroused regarding possible sexual abuse of a child. We merely hold that statements resulting from such questioning cannot meet the narrow grounds for admissibility under MRE 803A. The prohibition on hearsay is the longstanding general rule, and thus exceptions to this prohibition must be appropriately enforced. [39] In sum, we hold that a statement prompted by an adult's question specifically concerning sexual abuse is not spontaneous. This is true even if other indicia of reliability exist, such as an emotional response or details provided by the child that exceed the scope of the adult's inquiry. The Court of Appeals thereby erred by focusing on these other indicia of reliability rather than who broached the subject of sexual abuse, the specific questions asked by the adult during the conversation, and how some of the questioning suggested or implied answers. Viewing GA's statements in light of the totality of the circumstances in this case, these critical factors render her statements nonspontaneous. In future cases, though, we emphasize that a statement made in response to an adult's question or comment that does not concern abuse, or where the child brings up the subject of abuse, may be spontaneous, and for the purposes of MRE 803A may be equally as admissible as if the child had made a statement arising out of nowhere.