Opinion ID: 1908937
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Hearsay Theory As It Relates to the Unintended Implications of Words

Text: The State points to the federal Advisory Committee note to Fed.R.Evid. 801(a), stating that both verbal and nonverbal implied assertions, if unintentional, should be excluded from the definition of hearsay. The Committee note states as follows: [N]onverbal conduct ... may be offered as evidence that the person acted as he did because of his belief in the existence of the condition sought to be proved, from which belief the existence of the condition may be inferred. This sequence is, arguably, in effect an assertion of the existence of the condition and hence properly includable within the hearsay concept. Admittedly evidence of this character is untested with respect to the perception, memory, and narration (or their equivalents) of the actor, but the Advisory Committee is of the view that these dangers are minimal in the absence of an intent to assert and do not justify the loss of the evidence on hearsay grounds. No class of evidence is free of the possibility of fabrication, but the likelihood is less with nonverbal than with assertive verbal conduct. The situations giving rise to the nonverbal conduct are such as virtually to eliminate questions of sincerity. Motivation, the nature of the conduct, and the presence or absence of reliance will bear heavily upon the weight to be given the evidence. Similar considerations govern nonassertive verbal conduct and verbal conduct which is assertive but offered as a basis for inferring something other than the matter asserted, also excluded from the definition of hearsay by the language of subdivision (c). 56 F.R.D. 183, 293 (1972) (citations omitted). The view expressed in the federal Committee note has been criticized in court cases and by legal commentators. The notion that evidence untested with respect to the perception, memory, and narration (or their equivalents) of the actor poses minimal dangers in the absence of an intent to assert has been labeled a non sequitur on the grounds that the inferences of perception, memory, and narration are wholly independent from any intention to assert. The fact that a declarant may not have intended to communicate a particular factual proposition reveals nothing about the circumstances under which the declarant came to believe that proposition, nor about the clarity with which the declarant remembers the underlying events. Professor Paul Rice explains the point as follows: Of the four dangers giving rise to the hearsay exclusionary ruleperception, memory, sincerity, and ambiguitythe assertive/nonassertive distinction addresses only one: the danger of insincerity ( i.e. intentional misrepresentation). If a declarant possesses no intention of asserting anything, it would seem to follow that he also possesses no intention of misrepresenting anything. It is a non sequitur to conclude from this, as the Advisory Committee has, that the remaining dangers of perception, memory, and ambiguity are automatically minimized with this assurance of sincerity. The logical link which the Advisory Committee finds between sincerity and error is simply nonexistent. Paul R. Rice, Should Unintended Implications of Speech be Considered Nonhearsay? The Assertive/Nonassertive Distinction Under Rule 801(a) of the Federal Rules of Evidence, 65 Temp. L.Rev. 529, 531 (1992). [2] See also David E. Seidelson, Implied Assertions and Federal Rule of Evidence 801: A Continuing Quandary for Federal Courts, 16 Miss. C.L.Rev. 33, 34-35 (1995); Bacigal, supra, at 1132; Finman, supra, at 685-86. The Supreme Court of Iowa echoed these concerns in State v. Dullard, 668 N.W.2d 585, 590 (Iowa 2003): [T]he persuasiveness of the committee notes on implied assertions is undermined by the clear split of authority among the federal circuit courts, as well as many legal scholars.    The circumstances of this case, as well as other cases, can make it tempting to minimize hearsay dangers when a declaration is assertive but offered as a basis for inferring a belief of the declarant that most likely was not a significant aspect of the communication process at the time the declaration was made. Absent unusual circumstances, the unknown declarant likely would not have thought about communicating the implied belief at issue, and this lack of intent arguably justifies excluding the assertion from the hearsay rule. Nevertheless, we are not convinced that the absence of intent necessarily makes the underlying belief more reliable, especially when the belief is derived from verbal conduct as opposed to nonverbal conduct. Four dangers are generally identified to justify the exclusion of out-of-court statements under the hearsay rule: erroneous memory, faulty perception, ambiguity, and insincerity or misrepresentation. Yet, the distinction drawn between intended and unintended conduct or speech only implicates the danger of insincerity, based on the assumption that a person who lacks an intent to assert something also lacks an intent to misrepresent. Id. at 593-94 (citations omitted). With respect to the danger of ambiguous narration, Professor Ronald Bacigal suggests that absence of an intent to communicate actually increases the danger of misunderstanding. He explains this theory as follows: If there is a distinction in the ambiguity of intended and implied assertions, the distinction indicates that unintended implied assertions are inherently more ambiguous. When a declarant consciously intends to communicate with an observer, he desires his communication to be understood by that observer.... With unintentional implied assertions, however, the declarant makes no effort to avoid ambiguity, because there is no intent to convey his message to anyone. Thus, unintentional implied assertions have an inherently greater potential to be more ambiguous than intended assertions. The Federal Rules have it backward by classifying the less ambiguous intended assertions as hearsay, while classifying the more ambiguous unintentional assertions as nonhearsay. Ronald J. Bacigal, Implied Hearsay: Defusing the Battle Line Between Pragmatism and Theory, 11 S. Ill. U. L.J. 1127, 1132 (1987). The federal Committee Note has been criticized also for conflating its analysis of the dangers posed by words with the dangers posed by nonverbal conduct. In particular, critics argue that language almost always conveys some intended meaning, and that the value of words as evidence of an underlying belief will necessarily depend on the sincerity with which the intentional meaning of those words is communicated. [3] Professor Rice addresses this problem as follows: If the justification for the assertive/nonassertive distinction is the absence of the insincerity problem, and through that guarantee of sincerity a reduced level of perception, memory, and ambiguity problems, this justification cannot be applied to implied statements from speech. Speech is a mechanism of communication; it is virtually always used for the purpose of communicating something to someone. It is illogical to conclude that the question of sincerity is eliminated and that the problem of unreliability is reduced for unintended implications of speech if that speech might have been insincere in the first instance, relative to the direct message intentionally communicated. If potential insincerity is injected into the utterance of words that form the basis for the implied communication, the implication from the speech is as untrustworthy as the utterance upon which it is based. Rice, supra, at 534. Professor Michael Graham considers this problem in his Handbook of Federal Evidence: The Advisory Committee's apparent attempted rejection of Wright v. Doe d. Tatham is as unfortunate as it is incorrect. When a statement is offered to infer the declarant's state of mind from which a given fact is inferred in the form of an opinion or otherwise, since the truth of the matter asserted must be assumed in order for the nonasserted inference to be drawn, the statement is properly classified as hearsay under the language of [Fed. R. Evid] 801(c). Since the matter asserted in the statement must be true, a reduction in the risk of sincerity is not present. The Advisory Committee's reliance on the analogy to nonverbal nonassertive conduct where a reduction in the risk of fabrication is caused by a lack of intent to assert anything is thus clearly misconceived. 3 Michael H. Graham, Handbook of Federal Evidence § 801.7, at 73-77 (5th ed.2001) (citations omitted). [4] The Iowa Supreme Court addressed this issue in Dullard, reasoning as follows: [E]ven the danger of insincerity may continue to be present in those instances where the reliability of the direct assertion may be questioned. If the expressed assertion is insincere, such as a fabricated story, the implied assertion derived from the expressed assertion will similarly be unreliable. Implied assertions can be no more reliable than the predicate expressed assertion. Dullard, 668 N.W.2d at 594. We conclude that, with respect to the four testimonial inferences, out-of-court words offered for the truth of unintentional implications are not different substantially from out-of-court words offered for the truth of intentional communications. The declarant's lack of intent to communicate the implied proposition does not increase the reliability of the declarant's words in a degree sufficient to justify exemption from the hearsay rule. Said another way, we conclude that a declarant's lack of intent to communicate a belief in the truth of a particular proposition is irrelevant to the determination of whether the words are hearsay when offered to prove the truth of that proposition. We hold that where the probative value of words, as offered, depends on the declarant having communicated a factual proposition [5] , the words constitute an assertion of that proposition. The declarant's intent vel non to communicate the proposition is irrelevant. If the words are uttered out of court, then offered in court to prove the truth of the proposition i.e. of the matter assertedthey are hearsay under our rules.