Court Opinion

ID: 9744014
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:52:13.506448+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:46.220293
License: Public Domain

SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
concurring.
Although I concur in the majority opinion, I write separately to explain why I believe that Weldon v. State (1869), 32 Ind. 81, is not stare decisis in this ease. Weldon is no longer the law in Indiana as I see it.
In Ketcham v. State (1959), 240 Ind. 107, 162 N.E.2d 247, appellant challenged a trial court’s decision allowing a mother to testify about a small child’s description of alleged sexual abuse. The facts of Ketcham were almost identical to those in Weldon. In each case, the child did not tell anyone about the alleged abuse until time had passed and a parent prompted the child with questions. This Court’s ruling had the same practical result in both cases: the parent was not allowed to relate the child’s comments. The reasoning in the cases, however, was very different.
To resolve the admissibility of the child’s statement in Ketcham, this Court passed over Weldon, never citing it, and relied instead upon 6 Wigmore on Evidence § 1761, at 175 (3rd ed. 1940), as support for the conclusion that “[ejvidence of a complaint made by the alleged victim of a sexual crime is competent evidence in the criminal proceedings based on the acts of which the complaint is made,” regardless of the victim’s age or lack of competency. 240 Ind. at 111, 162 N.E.2d at 248. As for whether the details of the crime that accompanied the complaint could be admitted through another's testimony, we declared that such testimony would be inadmissible hearsay. In examining whether the child’s statements were properly admitted under the res gestae exception to the hearsay rule, we held that the child’s statements about details were inadmissible because they were not spontaneous, not because the child was incompetent to testify. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Arter-burn explained:
The words must be reasonably contemporaneous with the act or incident to which it is connected.... The limiting feature in this connection is that the utterance must be made under the immediate and uncontrolled domination of the senses and during the period when considerations of self-interest and time to deliberate could not have been fully brought to *1201bear upon what was said, and therefore, the utterances are more trustworthy.... In the case before us there was no spontaneity in the details the mother received from the child, but rather the story was drawn out reluctantly by questions.
240 Ind. at 112, 162 N.E.2d at 249 (citations omitted).
Ketcham is the most recent statement of Indiana law by this Court.1 Ketcham clearly implies that the excited utterance of a child incompetent to testify will be considered reliable and admissible if it is spontaneous and reasonably contemporaneous with the event which provokes it. It thus overrules, sub silentio, the declaration in Weldon that the excited utterance of a child incompetent to testify may never be admitted.
My colleagues DeBruler and Dickson also assert that the child’s hearsay statement was improperly admitted because it “contains no indication that the child actually observed the shooting and there is not an adequate showing in the record that would indicate that the child’s statement was the result of such observation.” Slip op. at 4. The rule in Indiana, however, has accepted circumstantial proof of observation: “Direct proof of the out-of-court de-clarant’s personal observation is not necessary. ‘[I]t is sufficient if it appears inferentially that the declarant personally observed such matters and that there is nothing to make a contrary inference more probable.’ ” Spears v. State, 272 Ind. 634, 641, 401 N.E.2d 331, 336-37, on reh’g, (1980) 272 Ind. 647, 403 N.E.2d 828, overruled in part on other grounds, Hicks v. State (1989), Ind., 544 N.E.2d 500 (citations omitted). There is nothing apparent in the record that makes it more probable that the child did not see the shooting in this case. The trial judge was correct in admitting the statements and allowing the jury to draw its own inferences.
In the 120 years following this Court’s decision in Weldon, twenty-eight states have considered the admissibility of hearsay testimony relating excited utterances from children too young to testify competently. See Annotation, Admissibility of Testimony Regarding Spontaneous Declarations Made By One Incompetent to Testify at Trial, 15 A.L.R.4th 1043 (1982 & Supp.1989). Although different states require different time limits and degrees of spontaneity, only New York continues to reject completely admission of the excited utterances as unreliable. Id. In light of the large number of states that have reached the same conclusion, I believe we act prudently in sustaining the admission of testimony relating the excited utterance of this three-year-old child. I think it is a better course than relying on Weldon, a case that has been overruled sub silentio by subsequent Indiana case law, especially when such reliance would place Indiana far out of the mainstream of American jurisprudence.

. In Hopper v. State, Ind.App., 489 N.E.2d 1209, 1213, cert. denied, 479 U.S. 992, 107 S.Ct. 592, 93 L.Ed.2d 593 (1986), the Court of Appeals relied on Ketcham to find that a child victim’s statement was admissible within the excited utter-anee exception to the hearsay rule when the child spoke in response to one general question by the mother within minutes after the incident occurred.