Opinion ID: 1521629
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: defendant's daughter's assertions

Text: At a pretrial hearing the trial justice ruled defendant's daughter, then four years old, incompetent to testify. The trial justice was not convinced that the daughter could relate to the jury a capacity to observe, recollect, communicate or appreciate the necessity of telling the truth. The trial justice did, however, allow into evidence statements made by the little girl, first through the testimony of Ms. Diebler and then through the testimony of Dr. Ettefagh. The trial justice also allowed in Ms. Kaufman's testimony as to the little girl's demonstrations using anatomical dolls. The trial justice allowed verbal statements made by defendant's daughter to come in under two separate exceptions to the hearsay rule. The statements made to Mary Diebler were let in under the spontaneous-utterance exception. The statements made to Dr. Ettefagh were let in under the medical-records exception. The defendant argues that those statements were hearsay not within any exception and that, in any event, they were inadmissible because the little girl was ruled to be incompetent as a witness. The defendant also argues that Ms. Kaufman's testimony was inadmissible hearsay. Hearsay is an out-of-court assertion offered for its truth. The assertion may be verbal or may be communicated through conduct. [1] Hearsay is generally inadmissible because such an assertion cannot be subjected to the truth-finding test of cross-examination. The theory of the hearsay rule is that the many deficiencies, suppressions, sources of error and untrustworthiness, which lie underneath the bare untested assertion of a witness, may be best brought to light and exposed by the test of cross-examination. 5 Wigmore, Evidence, § 1362 at 3 (Chadbourn rev. 1974). Further, when hearsay is not admitted, the procedural safeguards of confrontation and of the sworn oath are not compromised. Exceptions to the hearsay rule exist only because of the inherent reliability of certain kinds of assertions. When a trial justice has ruled a witness incompetent to testify because the justice is not convinced that the witness is capable of relating a capacity to observe, to recollect, to communicate, or to appreciate truthfulness, the justice has already made the determination that the witness's assertions are unreliable. Though there may be instances in which a witness is competent at the time he or she makes an assertion and later, at the time of trial, due to the onset of senility or mental illness, is incompetent, such does not hold true with infants. If an infant is ruled incompetent at the time of trial because she is only four years old, assertions made by that infant a year earlier cannot be considered inherently more reliable. Logic dictates that, if anything, they are less reliable. It is possible that there may exist situations in which, even though a child is incompetent, an earlier statement or instance of conduct by the child would be admissible because of its obvious spontaneous nature and direct temporal proximity to an exciting event. Such is not the situation here, however. The daughter's statements to Ms. Diebler. In this case, defendant's daughter's statements to Ms. Diebler were made nine days after the daughter's last visit with her father. Many of these statements were made in response to questions asked by Ms. Diebler, and the statements cover six pages of transcript. In State v. Jalette, 119 R.I. 614, 619-21, 382 A.2d 526, 529-30 (1978), also a case involving utterances by a daughter allegedly sexually assaulted by her father, we said that it is the state's burden to prove each utterance was a spontaneous verbal reaction to some startling or shocking event, made while the declarant was still in a state of nervous excitement produced by the event and made before the declarant had time to reflect, contrive, or misrepresent. Only when the circumstances surrounding the making of a statement guarantee the special trustworthiness of the statement will it be admitted. Id. In Jalette we found that a twenty-two-hour lapse between the time the daughter was allegedly fondled and the time she reported the incident to her mother negated the spontaneity required for the statements to her mother to fall within the spontaneous-utterance exception. Here, the daughter's statements to Ms. Diebler came after the daughter had been with her mother for nine days. During that nine days the mother, who had for some months suspected abuse, spoke with a DCF worker and took the children to see their pediatrician to have them checked for sexual abuse. These circumstances do not present the circumstantial guarantee of special trustworthiness we require to admit such statements over a hearsay objection. The state has not met its burden of proving that these statements were made before the declarant had time to reflect, contrive, or misrepresent. It has not shown that the daughter could not have been coached by the already suspecting mother during the nine days they were together. In Ketcham v. State, 240 Ind. 107, 162 N.Ed.2d 247 (1959), statements made by a five-year-old girl to her mother after an alleged sexual attack by the defendant were not allowed into evidence through the mother as spontaneous utterances. The Ketcham court said: If the small child could tell the story to her mother, she could have told it on the witness stand to the jury, where it could [have been] subjected to the usual test of credibility. It is no answer to say she was too young to be a witness. If such be true, then the credibility of such testimony was not enhanced by having it presented second-handed to the jury by another person. Id. at 113, 162 N.E.2d at 250. On the facts before us, we are persuaded by the Ketcham court's rationale. The lack of a circumstantial guarantee of special trustworthiness, the distance in time from the exciting event, and the responsive nature of the statements are factors which persuade us that, in this case, defendant's right to confront and cross-examine his accuser was paramount over the admission of the kind of hearsay offered against him. The daughter's statements to Dr. Ettefagh. By the same reasoning, the daughter's statements to Dr. Ettefagh are also inadmissible. It does not matter that the statements were classified as a medical exception rather than as spontaneous utterances. The statements were made a month after the child's last visit with her father and were responsive in nature. If the child could tell the story to the doctor, she could have told it on the witness stand to the jury. We need not reach defendant's other contentions. We agree that all assertions by defendant's daughter were inadmissible once the trial justice had ruled the little girl incompetent, and because there is at least a reasonable possibility that this evidence could have influenced the jury in reaching its verdict, we must reverse. Jalette, 119 R.I. at 623, 382 A.2d at 530. This court recognizes that with certain crimes the evidence is sometimes so concealed that it is nearly impossible to present enough legal evidence to sustain a conviction. Nonetheless, such instances do not warrant admitting statements by an incompetent witness untested by cross-examination into evidence where the liberty of one charged with a serious crime hangs in the balance. See Ketcham, 240 Ind. at 113-14, 162 N.E.2d at 250. As John Adams pointed out over two centuries ago, under our system of justice it is far better to have many guilty persons go free than to have one innocent person be wrongly convicted. 3 Legal Papers of John Adams, 242 (1965) (Adams's Argument for the Defense, Rex v. Wemms, Dec. 3-4, 1770).