Court Opinion

ID: 9785768
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 22:20:05.06032+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:32.883198
License: Public Domain

Judge Pro Tem SCHWARTZMAN,
Specially Concurring.
I concur in the opinion of this Court, but wish to write separately on the use of Detective Thurman’s testimony regarding James’ statements to him to impeach her testimony that she later lacked any memory of the events.
Prior to trial, the district court had issued an order excluding all of James’ statements to police officers other than security guard Smith as not falling within the excited utterance exception to the hearsay rule, I.R.E. 803(2). However, the trial court then permitted Thurman to testify concerning the specific details of James’ account to him for purposes of impeachment. The court also gave a limiting instruction to the jury that this evidence was admitted “solely for the purpose of testing the credibility of the witness, and not as substantive evidence of the *423truth of the facts contained in such statements.”
The above evidentiary rulings are technically correct. However, I think it takes a combination of wishful thinking and the willing suspension of disbelief to require a jury to follow the court’s limiting instruction when it has now been made privy to the specific details of the admittedly hearsay account to the police officer. If the intent of the ruling is to impeach credibility — here, a negative of “I don’t remember” — then all the jury really needs to know is (1) that the witness previously did remember a particular incident and (2) that the witness gave a specific version of what happened, verbally and in writing, to the officer. The jury need not, and indeed should not, be given or exposed to a verbatim hearsay account of those statements when its sole purpose is to impeach credibility. Juries are not superhuman and should not be needlessly expected to act as trained legal evidentiary scholars.
Alternatively, the day may come when such recanted or inconsistent statements may be admissible as substantive evidence pursuant to I.R.E. 808(24) — other exceptions: the convenient lapse of memory or I tripped and fell excuse in domestic battery cases where the domestic partners have since reconciled.