Opinion ID: 3010767
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: m. there could have been a 40 minute time span,

Text: probably too long for applicability of the present sense exception. Therefore, the government cannot rely on a hearsay exception which requires the statement to be made 7 virtually contemporaneously with the event being perceived. See, e.g., 2 Michael H. Graham, Handbook of Federal Evidence S 803.1 (4th ed. 1996) (the theory underlying the present sense impression is that substantial contemporaneity minimizes unreliability due to defective recollection or conscious fabrication). Of course, if the writer and the 911 caller were the same, and the notes were left shortly before the 911 call at 9:37, the temporal limitation might have been satisfied. See McCurdy v. Greyhound Corporation, 346 F.2d 224, 226 (3d Cir. 1965) (statement admissible under the excited utterance exception even though it was made ten or fifteen minutes after an accident); United States v. Blakey, 607 F.2d 779 (7th Cir. 1979) (holding admissible a statement made up to 23 minutes after it was observed as a present sense impression), overruled in part on other grounds, Idaho v. Wright, 497 U.S. 805 (1990). However, given the total lack of information regarding the circumstances of the note's creation, the trial court could not reasonably find that there was no time to fabricate the statement. We note that there are other problems as to admission of the note as an excited utterance. There was no indication that the author was under the stress of excitement when s/he wrote the note (or when the 911 call was made), a requirement of the excited utterance exception.The assumption underlying the hearsay exception of Rule 803 (2) is that a person under the sway of excitement temporarily loses the capacity of reflection and thus produced statements free of fabrication. Miller, 754 F.2d at 512. Further, there is no evidence that the parking of the beige car was a shocking or exciting event. For all of the above reasons, we feel bound to conclude that it was error to introduce the anonymous note as either a present sense impression or an excited utterance exception to the hearsay rule. 8