Opinion ID: 787760
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Victim's Statements

Text: 75 The doomed victim of this crime had, as we have already noted, been severely frightened on the night before her death by a prowler, who tried to break into her home. In a great state of agitation, 17 she called the police and spoke to dispatchers and to police officers. Among other things, she said that she thought the prowler was Leavitt, because he had tried to talk himself into her home earlier that day, 18 but she had refused him entry. Leavitt claims that the admission of the hearsay testimony violated his rights under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Of course, one cannot confront a hearsay declarant, but not all uses of hearsay violate the Confrontation Clause. See Idaho v. Wright, 497 U.S. 805, 813-14, 110 S.Ct. 3139, 3145-46, 111 L.Ed.2d 638 (1990). Hearsay can be admitted if it is sufficiently reliable. Reliability is shown when the hearsay falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception or is supported by particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. Guam v. Ignacio, 10 F.3d 608, 612 (9th Cir.1993) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). 76 The Idaho courts relied upon the state's residual exception, 19 which is not firmly rooted, but the evidence could properly have come in under the excited utterance exception, 20 which is. See Wright, 497 U.S. at 817, 820, 110 S.Ct. at 3147, 3149. We have considered the circumstances 21 and have no doubt that the victim was speaking while under the baleful influence of an exceedingly stressful event — the attempt by an intruder to break into her home. Nor do we doubt that she lacked the time or the incentive to reflect upon and confabulate a story. Thus, the evidence properly came in as an excited utterance. 22 There was no violation of Leavitt's constitutional rights.