Court Opinion

ID: 9855971
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:35:18.401913+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:20.763829
License: Public Domain

Sears, Justice,
concurring specially.
I believe that the majority’s analysis in Division 4 concerning the admission of Mrs. Quijano’s hearsay statements to police officers is based upon an incomplete reading of the relevant case law. Once that case law is fully considered, it becomes apparent that Mrs. Quijano’s statements lacked sufficient indicia of reliability to warrant their admission. Therefore, unlike the majority, I believe that the trial court erred by admitting the statements into evidence. However, due to the overwhelming admissible evidence of appellant’s guilt, I believe that the trial court’s error was harmless. Therefore, I concur specially.
The officer who questioned Mrs. Quijano testified that during the interview, she was very frightened, and asked several times if she and her daughter (who was being questioned at the same time) were under arrest and would be taken to jail. Despite being told that she was not under arrest and would not be jailed, Mrs. Quijano remained upset and frightened, and expressed her distrust of the interviewing officer. She also said she feared reprisal from her husband’s family. Later in the interview, Mrs. Quijano asked to speak with her daughter, who was being questioned in a separate room, and she told her daughter that if she did not tell police “what they wanted to hear,” then Mrs. Quijano feared they both would be arrested and jailed. There is no evidence that any of the officers who were present when this statement was made attempted to refute Mrs. Quijano’s assertion.
*187It is sometimes permissible to admit hearsay statements in limited situations of necessity where the declarant is unavailable for trial, and the statements sought to be admitted possess a guarantee of trustworthiness that is the substantive equivalent of the circumstances under which the declarant would have testified if available for trial.2 We have previously held that a spouse who asserts the marital privilege in lieu of testifying is considered “unavailable” for purposes of the necessity exception.3 However, as stated repeatedly by this Court, before hearsay statements can be admitted under the necessity exception, there must be a definite showing that the statements possess ‘“a circumstantial guaranty of the trustworthiness . . . that is, there must be something present [in the making of the statements] which the law considers a substitute for the oath of the declarant and his [or her] cross examination by the party against whom the hearsay is offered.’ ”4 In other words, there must be some particular facts relative to the declarant’s making of the hearsay statement that is the equivalent of the circumstances under which a witness testifies at a criminal trial. Without a definite showing of such particular facts, the statement sought to be admitted remains pure hearsay, and is void of any evidentiary value whatsoever.5
Mrs. Quijano’s hearsay statements made to police officers during her questioning lacked the indicia of trustworthiness required to warrant their admission under the necessity exception, and the trial court erred in admitting the statements. The evidence before the trial court showed beyond question that Mrs. Quijano made her statements under extreme duress and while in fear for her own safety, as well as that of her daughter. In fact, there is direct evidence that Mrs. Quijano honestly believed that unless she made statements incriminating her husband, she and her daughter would be arrested and jailed. These circumstances cannot be legitimately construed as the substantial equivalent of a witness’s oath and cross-examination by opposing counsel. Accordingly, I believe the trial court erred in admitting Mrs. Quijano’s hearsay statements under the necessity exception, just as the majority errs in sanctioning that admission.
The majority, however, concludes that a circumstantial guaran*188tee of trustworthiness existed because Mrs. Quijano made her statements to “officers who were investigating the crime.”6 However, as made clear by the precedent quoted above, a determination of trustworthiness, or the lack thereof, must be made upon the specific facts of the case under inquiry. If, in making this determination, the majority wishes to take into account the fact that Mrs. Quijano’s hearsay statements were made to police officers, then it also must take into account the fact that she was fearful of being arrested by those same officers unless she gave them incriminating evidence. In this case, the factual determination of trustworthiness must necessarily take into account the declarant’s subjective viewpoint concerning the circumstances in which she made her hearsay statements. I concede that there might be circumstances in which the fact that a witness spoke to police officers could be an indicia of reliability, such as where the declarant has previously demonstrated a high regard for, or willingness to cooperate with, law enforcement officers for altruistic reasons. However, those facts did not exist here. Here, the declarant was under extreme duress, stated that she did not trust the officers who were interrogating her, and said repeatedly that she was frightened she would be incarcerated by those same officers unless she implicated her husband in the crime. Under the precedent discussed above, these circumstances do not indicate that Mrs. Quijano’s ultimate implication of her husband was trustworthy.
Nonetheless, the majority dismisses the facts attending Mrs. Quijano’s hearsay statements by reasoning that simply because the statements were made to police officers, they were inherently trustworthy. Nothing in the case law, however, indicates that the trustworthiness of a hearsay statement turns on the profession of the individual to whom the statement was made. In this regard, I am concerned that in future cases, the majority’s ruling could be misconstrued to actually make the inquiry regarding the trustworthiness of hearsay statements less fact-specific, and sanction the perfunctory admission of hearsay statements simply because they were made to law enforcement officers. Such a construction of the majority’s ruling would be contradictory to this Court’s carefully crafted precedent regarding the necessity exception, and would threaten the sanctity of the rule prohibiting the admission of hearsay testimony.
Despite my misgivings about the majority’s analysis, however, I must agree with its ultimate conclusion. After reviewing the evidence in this case very closely, I conclude that the trial court’s error in admitting the hearsay statements was harmless due to the other overwhelming evidence of appellant’s guilt. Four eyewitnesses to the *189crime identified appellant as the perpetrator. One of those witnesses actually saw appellant dragging the victim’s body across the floor. Appellant’s hand prints were recovered at the crime scene from glass cases that had been cleaned only hours earlier. Appellant owned and drove the same model and color of car with the same specialized license tag as that used by the assailant, and he owned the same type of gun used in the murder. After the murder, appellant’s car was returned to the lienholder, and his gun was destroyed and disposed of by family members. In light of this compelling and overwhelming evidence of appellant’s guilt, I believe that in all likelihood, the improper admission of Mrs. Quijano’s hearsay statements to police officers had no impact on the jury’s verdict, and that the attending error therefore was harmless.7
Decided May 17, 1999
Reconsideration denied June 4, 1999.
David S. West, Bruce S. Harvey, for appellant.
Patrick H. Head, Jr., District Attorney, Debra H. Bernes, Russell J. Parker, Assistant District Attorneys, Thurbert E. Baker, Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Jeanne K. Strickland, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Benham and Presiding Justice Fletcher join in this special concurrence.

 See OCGA § 24-3-1 (b); Dram v. State, 265 Ga. 663, 664 (461 SE2d 224) (1995); Higgs v. State, 256 Ga. 606, 607 (351 SE2d 448) (1987).

 Dram, supra; Higgs, supra.

 Higgs, 256 Ga. at 607, quoting Chrysler Motors Corp. v. Davis, 226 Ga. 221, 224 (173 SE2d 691) (1970) (emphasis in original).

 In addition, we have recently emphasized that before hearsay evidence will be admitted under the necessity exception, it must be determined by the trial court that the evidence will be more probative than other admissible evidence. Chapel v. State, 270 Ga. 151, 155 (510 SE2d 802) (1998).

 Op. at 185.

 Spearman v. State, 267 Ga. 600, 601 (481 SE2d 814) (1997).