Court Opinion

ID: 9792858
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:38:09.264626+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:01:08.528396
License: Public Domain

MATTHEWS, Justice,
joined by RABI-NOWITZ, Chief Justice, concurring.
I agree with the Per Curiam opinion. Moreover, I believe that the questioned evidence was properly admitted under the recent fabrication exception1 to the common law rule prohibiting the admission of prior consistent statements, for the following reasons.
Defense counsel in this case elicited testimony that the victim was generally unhappy living with her mother and stepfather before the rape, and that thereafter, in early September, her mother and stepfather were in a violent fight involving a gun during which the victim and her younger sister were forced to flee to a neighbor’s house and the police were called. It was just a few days after this incident that the victim complained of the rape to her school counselor, which resulted in her being taken from the home of her mother and stepfather. Thus, while there was a general mo*1062tive to fabricate which antedated the rape there was also a specific event which could have supplied a motive to fabricate which occurred after the victim complained of the rape to her mother but before she complained of the rape to the school counselor.
Where there are several events which supply a motive to fabricate, evidence of a statement consistent with the declarant’s testimony which was made before the latest event, but after the others, may be admitted:
Otherwise, it would never be proper to rehabilitate a witness by proof of prior consistent statements in cases where numerous impeaching circumstances were shown to exist at the time of the trial but where there may be found a theoretical possibility that the witness might have been motivated by one of them at the time of making the prior consistent statement .... The principle involved is that where the circumstances are such as to leave it reasonably possible for the jury to say that the prior consistent statements did in fact antedate the motive disclosed on the cross-examination, the court should not exclude them.
United States v. Grunewald, 233 F.2d 556, 566 (2nd Cir. 1956), rev'd on other grounds, 353 U.S. 391, 77 S.Ct. 963, 1 L.Ed.2d 931 (1957).
Applying this rule to this case, the victim’s complaint to her mother was admissible under the recent fabrication exception.

. This exception has been codified in the Alaska Rules of Evidence as Rule 801(d)(1)(B). It provides:
A statement is not hearsay if
(1) The declarant testifies at the trial or hearing and the statement is ...
(B) consistent with his testimony and is offered to rebut an express or implied charge against him of recent fabrication or improper influence or motive ...