Court Opinion

ID: 9720599
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:37:19.210845+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:19.849277
License: Public Domain

WINANS, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The majority are clearly right when they hold the evidence of what the testifying witness claimed decedent said the defendant said to decedent over the telephone is hearsay. They are again right in holding the admission of this evidence was erroneous. Where I part company with their holding is that in my opinion it was prejudicial to the defendant’s case of self-defense and that its receipt into evidence constitutes reversible error.
The other evidence referred to by the court’s opinion “concerning the mutual feeling of ill will between the parties and their several threats and announced desire to get rid of the other” in my opinion, instead of curing the weight or adverse effect of the error only serves to make it more harmful. Certainly I am unable to accept the proposition that its admission is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705, 24 A.L.R.3d 1065. SDCL 15-6-61.
Its very receipt in evidence was to show that the defendant did not act in self-defense. It could not be offered for any other purpose and under no theory of any recognized exception to the many exceptions of the hearsay rule. The Dutton v. Evans case, 400 U.S. 74, 91 S.Ct. 210, 27 L.Ed.2d 213, referred to in the court’s opinion was also concerned with hearsay evidence. It produced multiple opinions, and only two members of the court used the harmless error rationale. However, the nub of the opinion as announced by Justice *645Stewart is that the hearsay evidence adduced under the evidentiary rule of the State of Georgia did not violate the constitution. It had been admitted in evidence under a coconspirator exception to the hearsay rule long established under the Georgia statutory law. We have no such rule of exception involved in this case. See Love v. State, Alaska, 457 P.2d 622, at page 629 et seq., for harmless error opinion.