Court Opinion

ID: 9730767
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:23:00.479502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:06.240848
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice
(concurring specially).
I concur with the affirmance of the defendant’s conviction, but I cannot agree that complainant's sleep talk is admissible, as an exception to the hearsay rule or otherwise. As the state argues, it is not hearsay. Sleep talk falls within neither the language nor the spirit of conduct contemplated as a “statement” by Minn.R.Evid. 801(a). A “statement” is there defined as “(1) an oral or written assertion or (2) non*643verbal conduct of a person, if it is intended by him as an assertion.”
The evidence here was not an assertion. The complainant asserted nothing. She merely called out defendant’s name and pleaded that he “stop it.” She was clearly involved in the role of a participant in a dream-world fantasy. Even if the dreamer had uttered sleep talk in the form of an assertion about the incident, rather than in the form of an enactment of an incident, such sleep talk could never constitute an assertion in the waking-world sense.
Our knowledge about dreaming indicates that, while dreams are to some degree connected to waking-hours desires and anxieties, there is no indication that dream sequences accurately mirror actual events. Therefore, sleep talk contains no probative value regarding actual events or the identities of actual participants. Since sleep talk makes the existence of a fact neither more probable nor less probable, it is relevant, as defined by Minn.R.Evid. 401.
Assuming arguendo that such evidence were relevant at all, its inherent unreliability would lead to its exclusion because its probative value is more than substantially outweighed by the dangers of prejudice. Minn.R.Evid. 403. The same concern about the unreliability of the evidence, which led this court to rule inadmissible statements made in a pre-trial hypnotic interview, should be controlling in this case. See e. g., State v. Mack, 292 N.W.2d 764 (Minn.1980).
Few cases have raised the precise question now before us.1 The basis for holding such evidence inadmissible is set out in Plummer v. Ricker, 71 Vt. 114, 41 A. 1045 (1898). In Plummer, a civil action for injury from a dog bite, testimony from the father of the plaintiff that the boy had cried out “Take him off” during his sleep was ruled inadmissible. The court there said: “Words spoken while in sleep are not evidence of a fact or condition of mind. They proceed from an unconscious and irresponsible condition; they have little or no meaning; they are as likely to refer to unreal facts or conditions as to things real; they are wholly unreliable * * Id. at 117, 41 A. at 1046.
I would hold evidence of sleep talk inadmissible as proof of the crime charged or as corroboration of a witness’ testimony. I would not change the trial court’s verdict, however, since the defendant could have been convicted without this evidence. The error was, in my judgment, harmless.

. People v. Robinson, 19 Cal. 40 (1861), apparently the first American case on this subject, held such testimony to be inadmissible. Another state has recently addressed a case factually close to the instant case. State v. Steltzer, 288 N.W.2d 557 (Iowa 1980). However, the court held that the alleged error in admitting the testimony was not preserved, and thus did not reach the question of the admissibility of the testimony itself. Id. at 558.