Court Opinion

ID: 9572532
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:42:31.153468+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:33:25.137526
License: Public Domain

Shanahan, J.,
concurring in the result.
The “excited utterance” exception to the rule against admission of hearsay is found in the Nebraska Evidence Rules, namely, Neb. Evid. R. 803:
Subject to the provisions of [Neb. Evid. R. 403], the following are not excluded by the hearsay rule, even though the declarant is available as a witness:
(1) A statement relating to a startling event or condition made while the declarant was under the stress of excitement caused by the event or condition____
*340Yet, this court tilts with temporal windmills en route to the boundary between an “excited utterance” and hearsay. The majority concludes that 2 days between the witnessed assault, as an “exciting” occurrence, and Cindy Plant’s statements do not disqualify her statements as excited utterances and shores up its conclusion with random references to decisions involving various time intervals, for example, 2 days or 2 months, which did not render some statements inadmissible as hearsay. For all the cases mentioned to support the majority’s position that particular time intervals did not adversely affect admissibility, there are just as many decisions rejecting admissibility based on those same intervals. See J. Myers, Child Witness Law and Practice § 5.33 (1987 and Cum. Supp. 1990). Absent from the majority’s opinion is any analysis of why different time intervals permit or prevent admissibility of a statement under stress of excitement as an exception to the rule against hearsay. If “time is fleeting,” the value of a decision determining admissibility under Neb. Evid. R. 803(1) on the basis of time is equally ephemeral.
Although the majority believes that the “crucial question in this case is whether Cindy Plant’s statements were made while she was still under stress from the startling event,” the issue is whether Cindy’s stress, resulting from the excitement of her witnessing the brutal assault on her stepbrother, caused her statements to Sergeant Muldoon. A corresponding question is whether Sergeant Muldoon utilized impermissible persuasion and suggestion or coaxing to effect Cindy’s statements. See, Com. v. McEachin, 371 Pa. Super. 188, 537 A.2d 883 (1988) (the statement, as an excited utterance, must clearly be the product of stress caused by a traumatic experience); People v Straight, 430 Mich. 418, 424 N.W.2d 257 (1988) (the statement, as an exception to the hearsay rule, must be caused by the stress of excitement from an event or condition rather than the result of a combination of physical stress and repeated questioning).
Some 2 days after the child victim was assaulted and that assault had been extensively investigated by police, Sergeant Muldoon, who, according to the majority’s characterization, is “professionally trained in eliciting the truth” from young children, contacted 4-year-old Cindy Plant for an investigative *341interview concerning the assault. Elicit means “to draw or bring out.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged 736 (1981). Muldoon commenced the interview around 7:30 p.m., but did not start his tape recorder for the interview until at least “[t]wenty minutes, a good 20 minutes” after the interview was underway. What communication occurred between Cindy Plant and Sergeant Muldoon during the 20-minute interval before activation of the tape recorder is undisclosed and, consequently, is relegated to the realm of complete conjecture or absolute speculation. What is contained in the recorded 34-minute interview is a series of Muldoon’s leading questions with Cindy Plant’s responses to those questions.
It is not Muldoon’s leading questions by themselves that cast suspicion on the reliability of Cindy Plant’s responses during the recorded interview, for, as observed by Professor Myers: “[C]ourts are in agreement that questioning itself need not destroy the spontaneity required by the exception. When questioning is leading, however, or when the adult drags the statement out of the child, the requirement of spontaneity may be missing.” J. Myers, supra, § 5.33 at 342-43. Also, as Professor Myers notes, very young children are susceptible to suggestion from authority figures, such as police officers. See J. Myers, supra, § 4.6.
Since the record fails to identify the content of the communication between Cindy Plant and Muldoon during the 20-minute period preceding the tape-recorded interview, we are left with several unanswered questions on account of the unrecorded interview and the silent record, namely: Did Sergeant Muldoon provide Cindy with the facts or other crucial information about the assault? Did he direct that Cindy repeat his statements for recording? Was the recording nothing more than the officer speaking through the child? Was prospective and imminent disapproval from an authority figure brought to bear on Cindy? Or did Muldoon merely get acquainted with Cindy to establish a comfortable atmosphere for the interview?
The State should have been required to present a foundation that Cindy’s trauma from observation of the assault caused or produced the account of the incident related by Cindy Plant to *342Sergeant Muldoon. That foundational information would have allowed the trial court to determine whether Cindy’s statements were produced by the stress of excitement caused by her observation of the assault, a prerequisite for admissibility of Cindy’s statements as an exception to the hearsay rule. See Neb. Evid. R. 104(1) (preliminary questions of admissibility of evidence). As the case now stands, there is a valid question whether Cindy Plant’s statements were the product of excitement caused by her observing the assault or whether her statements were produced by investigative information and leading questions from Muldoon. Absence of a factual basis concerning causality undermines the trial court’s evidential reception of Cindy’s statements and precludes a realistic review of that ruling on admissibility of evidence.
Consequently, although the majority suggests that the requirements for admissibility of a child’s statement as an excited utterance have been relaxed, the requirements of the excited utterance exception have been so “relaxed” that the requirements no longer stand up and have actually collapsed.
Also, the State should have been required to present evidence negating impermissible influence by Muldoon regarding Cindy’s statements. Without such evidence, the trial court was not in a position to determine whether there were equivalent circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness required for admissibility under Neb. Evid. R. 803(22). See Neb. Evid. R. 104(1). Without that determination, Cindy’s statements did not qualify for admission under the residual exception.
Since Cindy’s statements failed to qualify under any exception to the hearsay rule, the trial court erred in admitting Cindy’s statements.
This brings us to still another point, the majority’s expression “It is within the trial court’s discretion to admit or exclude evidence ... and such ruling will be upheld on appeal absent an abuse of discretion.” In essence, the foregoing rule allows a court the choice whether to comply with the Nebraska Evidence Rules in ruling on an evidential question at trial. A trial court must adhere to any of the Nebraska Evidence Rules in which discretion has no role; adherence is not optional. Hence, a court may not discretionarily admit evidence which is hearsay or *343otherwise inadmissible under the Nebraska Evidence Rules.
Nevertheless, in view of all the other evidence which was properly admitted in Plant’s trial, the erroneous admission of Cindy Plant’s statements is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. Watkins, 227 Neb. 677, 686, 419 N.W.2d 660, 666 (1988): “Harmless error exists in a jury trial of a criminal case when there is some incorrect conduct by the trial court which, on review of the entire record, did not materially influence the jury in a verdict adverse to a substantial right of the defendant.” See, also, State v. Cox, 231 Neb. 495, 504, 437 N.W.2d 134, 140 (1989): “Erroneous admission of evidence is harmless error and does not require reversal if the evidence erroneously admitted is cumulative and other relevant evidence, properly admitted, or admitted without objection, supports the finding by the trier of fact.” For that reason, and notwithstanding the majority’s misperception regarding Neb. Evid. R. 803(1), Plant’s conviction must be affirmed.