Opinion ID: 1419742
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Statement of Someone in the Crowd

Text: Mr. Harris also argues that the circuit court considered other hearsay evidence at his trial that made the trial unfair. This evidence came in when the police were describing how they first came to the scene, where they found the injured Ms. M. Specifically, the police testified that there was a crowd of 10 or so people on the scene, and that one of them (no one knew who) shouted to the police that Mr. Harris had just beaten Ms. M. Was this alleged statement to the police by an anonymous person in the crowd hearsay? It was an out-of-court statement, so it meets the first part of the test. Was this statement offered to prove the truth of the statement? That is, was it offered to prove that Mr. Harris beat Ms. M.or was it offered in evidence just to explain why the police went after Mr. Harris? While we cannot tell clearly from the record why the statement was offered, we will assume that it was offered to help prove that Mr. Harris beat Ms. M. Therefore, it was hearsay. If this crowd member statement was hearsay, then our next question is: did the statement qualify as an excited utterance? Here, the question is far more difficult than the case of Ms. M.'s statements. The circuit court had plenty of evidence that showed that Ms. M.'s statements were excited utterances. But the circuit court had much less evidence to go on, in evaluating the circumstances of the anonymous crowd member statement. For one thing, the court had no idea of the identity of the person who the police testified made the statement. For all the court knew, that person, if they indeed said what the police said, was repeating something that someone else had told them, and had not seen anything directly. This situation was confronted by the Supreme Court of New York, Appellate Division, in the case of People v. Alexander, 173 A.D.2d 296, 569 N.Y.S.2d 689 (1991). In that case, Donald Alexander was convicted of burglary of an apartment. The trial judge allowed a police officer to testify that people in a crowd outside the apartment building had told the police that they had seen Mr. Alexander climb out the window of the burglarized apartment. The New York Appeals Court concluded that the police testimony that people in the crowd said that Mr. Alexander climbed out the window was clearly hearsay, because the crowd statement was an out-of-court statement, and it was offered to prove the truth of the statementthat Mr. Alexander had indeed climbed out the window. The next question the New York court considered was whether the excited utterance exception to the rule against hearsay (New York calls this the spontaneous declaration exception) allowed the anonymous crowd member statement to be used as evidence against Mr. Alexander. The New York court noted that there was no proof of the identity of the crowd members, and no proof that they actually had an adequate opportunity to observe the events they described. The New York court decided that under these circumstances, the excited utterance exception did not apply because the trial court did not have a sufficient basis to evaluate the circumstances of the person who made the statement. We agree with the New York court that the situation of an unavailable, anonymous, unknown declarant who makes a hearsay statement should present serious concerns for a court considering whether to admit the statement into evidence. In another similar case, another appeals court stated that when the hearsay declarant is not only unavailable but is also unidentified, the party seeking to introduce the hearsay statement carries a heavier burden to demonstrate the statement's circumstantial trustworthiness. Miller v. Keating, 754 F.2d 507, 510 (3d Cir.1985). Unquestionably, it goes against our longstanding legal tradition, of insisting on a strict and high standard of proof and evidence in criminal cases, to allow people to be convicted of crimes based on the statements of anonymous people who do not appear in court to make their accusations. Of course there are many well-recognized and necessary exceptions to the rule that hearsay is generally prohibited. But the hearsay rule itself is crucial to the fairness of a criminal trial, where it should be applied strictly and its exceptions construed narrowly and in favor of the criminal defendant. The distinguished law professor Frank Cleckley of the West Virginia University College of Law, and a former Justice of this Court, states in his classic text on West Virginia evidence law that [a]n excited utterance is not admissible under Rule 803(2) unless the utterance is based upon personal knowledge of the declarant. See State v. Golden, 175 W.Va. 551, 336 S.E.2d 198 (1985)[.] Franklin D. Cleckley, Handbook on Evidence for West Virginia Lawyers, Vol. 2, 3d ed., Sec. 8-3(B)(2)(d). p. 201. Applying this principle to the record before us, it appears that the trial court did not have a solid basis to conclude that the crowd member's statement, that Mr. Harris had beaten Ms. M., was based on that crowd member's personal knowledge. Based on the foregoing, we hold that in a criminal case when a court is evaluating whether to apply the excited utterance exception of the W.Va.R.Evid. 803(2) to a hearsay statement by an unknown, anonymous, declarant, the court should ordinarily conclude that the statement does not meet the criteria for the 803(2) exception, unless the statement is accompanied by exceptional indicia of reliability and the ends of justice and fairness require that the statement be admitted into evidence. In the Alexander case, the New York court reversed Mr. Alexander's conviction because of the hearsay that was used in his trial, and remanded the case for a new trial in which the crowd statements could not be put into evidence against Mr. Alexander. Specifically, the New York court reversed Mr. Alexander's conviction because the only evidence placing [Mr. Alexander] directly at the scene of the crime was the crowd's hearsay statement. 173 A.D.2d at 298, 569 N.Y.S.2d at 691. However, in the case before us, the anonymous crowd member's alleged statement that Mr. Harris had just beaten Ms. M. was not the only evidence that directly implicated Mr. Harris. Ms. M. herself, and other circumstantial evidence, directly and clearly implicated Mr. Harris. Additionally, when we read the trial judge's statement of his reasons for finding Mr. Harris guilty, the judge does not mention at all the crowd member's statement. Rather, the only statement that the judge refers to is the police testimony about what Ms. M. told them.