Court Opinion

ID: 9756971
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:11:39.932317+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:33.859328
License: Public Domain

Kenison, C.J.,
concurring specially: The majority opinion correctly states the general rule followed in New Hampshire forbidding any substantive use of prior inconsistent statements. This rule is as binding on me as it is on the bench and bar of this State and, until changed by the legislature or this court, should be respected. The purpose of this special concurrence is to indicate that if a minority of this court should develop to change the rule, I would join them.
Distinguished commentators have approved general substantive use of prior inconsistent statements. 3A J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1018, at 996 (Chadbourn rev. 1970); C. McCormick, Evidence § 251, at 602-04 (2d ed. 1972); Morgan, Hearsay Dangers and the Application of the Hearsay Concept, 62 Harv. L. Rev. 177, 192-96 (1948); Maguire, The Hearsay System: Around and Through the Thicket, 14 Vand. L. Rev. 741, 767-68 (1961). “There is currently moving forward at the hands of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire a carefully deliberate extension of hearsay admissibility, case by case, shrewdly tied in each instance to the most closely related precedents but relying on a broad formula of necessity plus apparent trustworthiness.” Maguire, supra at 774-75 and footnote 105.
There is a touch of irony in the fact that the leading case in this *116State in which the general or orthodox rule was adopted without enthusiasm, Judge Allen conceded that it was carrying logic to extremes. “The rule that extrajudicial statements of witnesses not parties are evidence, not of their truth, but only to discredit their testimony ... is an application of the hearsay principle which carries logic to extremes at the expense of ordinary processes of reasoning. That testimony may be discredited or rejected by showing the witness’ extrajudicial statements in contradiction, but without permitting any finding of the truth of such statements, seems a technical distinction to the lay mind.” Zogoplos v. Brown, 84 N.H. 134, 137, 146 A. 862, 863 (1929). There is a continuing need to let in a little sunshine on the darkness of our hearsay rules. See Maguire, Hearsay Obscurity - Glimmers of Daylight, 3 N.H.B.J. 145, 146-47, 158 (1961).