Opinion ID: 2525572
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Glover's statement was hearsay

Text: The State did not offer Glover's unsworn, out-of-court statement to the police into evidence as it could have under NRS 51.035(3). When offered by Glover, the statement was inadmissible hearsay unless some other basis for its admission was adduced, but none was. Implicit in Glover's negative-inference argument was that the jury should accept his unadmitted out-of-court statement as a species of prior consistent statementthat the jurors should infer that the State did not show them the tape because Glover's statement to the police supported his trial testimony that he acted in self-defense. However, the State didn't impeach Glover with a prior inconsistent statement or accuse him of recent fabrication or improper influence or motive, NRS 51.035(2)(b), which is required for a prior consistent statement to come in. This left Glover's police statement inadmissible. Nevada's evidence code, like the Federal Rules of Evidence, does not accord. . . weighty, nonhearsay status to all prior consistent statements. Tome v. United States, 513 U.S. 150, 157, 115 S.Ct. 696, 130 L.Ed.2d 574 (1995) (construing Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(1)(B), a cognate to NRS 51.035(2)(b)). A party who takes the stand and testifies in support of his cause cannot bolster his incourt testimony with consistent but self-serving prior out-of-court statements. United States v. Bao, 189 F.3d 860, 864-65 (9th Cir.1999). This is so even though parts of his prior out-of-court statement are statements against penal interest. Id.; see United States v. Ortega, 203 F.3d 675, 682 (9th Cir.2000) (stating [t]he fact that a person is making a broadly self-inculpatory confession does not make more credible the confession's non-self-inculpatory parts [which are hearsay]) (quotation omitted) (alterations in original); United States v. Chard, 115 F.3d 631, 634-35 (8th Cir.1997). As the Supreme Court stated in Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594, 600, 114 S.Ct. 2431, 129 L.Ed.2d 476 (1994), [s]elf-exculpatory statements are exactly the ones which people are most likely to make even when they are false; and mere proximity to other, self-inculpatory, statements does not increase the plausibility of the self-exculpatory statements.