Court Opinion

ID: 9583415
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:38:22.288033+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:00.316565
License: Public Domain

HOWE, Justice,

concurring and dissenting:

I concur in the lead opinion except that I dissent from that part upholding the admissibility of statements made by the victim to Keith Brady about thirty-eight hours after the assault. The lead opinion correctly recognizes that “the most difficult issue in determining the admissibility of an excited utterance is whether the statement was uttered with a spontaneity produced by emotional excitement to a degree that provides a warrant of trustworthiness.” Further, the lead opinion correctly observes:
It is not enough, however, to meet the requirements of the [excited utterance] exception that a declarant merely be subject to a degree of aroused emotion produced by the startling event when a hearsay declaration is made_ [Attenuated, fingering after-effects of shock, excitement, or fear cannot justify the admission of an out-of-court declaration made long after a startling or traumatic event.
In its analysis of the admissibility of Brady’s testimony and its conclusion that the testimony was admissible, the lead opinion is not faithful to the foregoing rules which it espouses. Keith Brady was a detective for the Ogden City Police Department. He had no official part in investigating the crime. He had been a friend of the victim’s parents for four years and in that capacity had become acquainted with the victim and her sister. He interviewed the child victim on the Monday morning following the Saturday night assault on her. At that time, she complained of “a little bit” of pain. Brady described her as very distant. “It seemed that she wasn’t herself. She wasn’t her playful, friendly — you know, usually she would run up and give me hugs when I see her and that.” Brady conversed with her for an hour to an hour and a half. He said, “[S]he wouldn’t just come out and talk to me. Like I said, she was kind of distant still at this time.”
Someone then suggested to Brady that he play a memory game with her. It was a game of cards where the player turns one card over and tries to match it with another card. It was a game that she liked playing. During the playing of this game, Brady was able to ask her numerous questions concerning the assault. Many of the questions were leading. It appears from Brady’s testimony that everything the victim stated to him was in response to his questions. It does not appear that she made any spontaneous statement about the event.
In State v. Thomas, 111 P.2d 445, 449 (Utah 1989), we held that it was error for the trial court to have allowed a police officer to testify concerning statements made to her by an adult victim of a rape during a one-hour interview conducted one to two horn’s after the rape. In that case, we wrote:
In the instant case, not only were the statements made to the officer after significant time delay, but the officer’s testimony consisted of repetition of everything which the victim had told her during the one-hour interview. The testimony was not limited to a few statements which might be viewed as being spontaneous or excited utterances. While it is true that the victim was still under the stress and shock of the assault, we believe that we would be pushing the limits of the rule to hold admissible *246the entire contents of this one-hour interview as an “excited utterance.”
Id. This statement applies with equal force here. It is true that the victim here is a child whereas the victim in Thomas was an adult. However, the delay of thirty-eight hours here is much longer than the one- to two-hour lapse in Thomas. Here, none of the victim’s statements to Brady during the hour to hour and a half interview appear to me to have been spontaneous. All of them had to be drawn out of the victim, who was extremely reluctant to talk and only began to open up when playing a card game. The statements were the antithesis of excited utterances.
Although I believe that the admission of Brady’s testimony was erroneous, it was a harmless error. Other witnesses and evidence overwhelmingly established the presence of defendant in Corinne that Saturday evening and linked him to the crime of which he was convicted.
ZIMMERMAN, C.J., and RUSSON, J., concur in Justice HOWE’s concurring and dissenting opinion.