Opinion ID: 1700286
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of Prejudicial Hearsay

Text: A finance company was robbed shortly after ten o'clock in the morning. Acting on the basis of information that the defendant was one of the two robbers, the police went to his home and found certain incriminating evidence. At the trial before the jury, the prosecutor produced a police witness to explain the basis for the search. The witness first established that he had received certain information from a confidential informant who had proven reliable on many past occasions. The witness was then asked if he had received information from the informant as to the present robbery. His response to that question (without revealing the content of the information) and as to what he had done on the basis of the information received is, of course, not subject to the hearsay objection. Here, however, the witness was further permitted to testify to the content of the information received from the anonymous informer. After the objection to receiving hearsay witness from the police officer was overruled, these further questions by the prosecutor were permitted, with the following responses: Q. You received what information? A. Who had committed the robbery? Q. Who was it? A. The man sitting right there. Q. Ezzard Charles Thompson [the defendant]? A. Yes. [1] The admission of this testimony was prejudicial hearsay. The effect of permitting the evidence was not only to prove that a statement was made, which would not be hearsay. The effect of admitting the testimony was to permit into testimony the content of the statement of this anonymous witness, not sworn on subject to cross-examination at the trial, to the effect that this defendant had committed the crime for which he was on trial. In Louisiana criminal trials, hearsay is inadmissible except under recognized exceptions. La.R.S. 15:434. The hearsay rule excludes out of court assertions offered to prove the matter asserted because they are not made under oath and their veracity cannot be tested by cross examination. Pugh, Louisiana Evidence Law 388-89. The traditional exclusion of hearsay in Anglo-American jury trials is based upon historic considerations of unreliability and of potential unfairness to an accused to permit into evidence damaging out-of-court statements which cannot be tested as to their basis in fact, or by cross-examination of the out-of-court declarant. Pugh, 388-432. Thus, in this jury trial on the merits of innocence or guilt, the testimony of the out-of-court information furnished by the anonymous informer could only be taken as evidence of the truth of its content, the guilt of the accused. [2] While the fact that a statement was made is not hearsay, the content of the statement is inadmissible. It constitutes prejudicial hearsay directly relating to the guilt of the accused and not admissible under any recognized exception to the hearsay rule. State v. Kimble, 214 La. 58, 36 So.2d 637 (1948).