Purpose Of Hearsay

363 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: The rule against hearsay evidence

The purpose of the hearsay rule is to prohibit a witness from reporting a statement made by another person where the purpose of the evidence is to establish the truth of what is contained in the statement.

In hearsay, the witnesses are asking the court to believe that they are telling the truth and the person who told them or whom they overheard was also telling the truth. It is the latter assumption which makes that hearsay is generally not admissible in court.

Statements were tendered to prove the truth of the matter; however, since the maker of the statement is not available to be a witness, the truthfulness and the accuracy of the statement could not be tested in court through cross-examination.

The idea of cross-examination is to test the reliability of the evidence of the witnesses. However, when the maker of the statement is not available for cross-examination, the court did not have the opportunity to ascertain the …show more content…

It is a report of another person’s words by a witness. It means that the witnesses testify about something they overheard, or something someone has told them, or even something someone has written. The witnesses themselves have no personal knowledge of the events or incidents.

Hearsay is, as mentioned before, a report of another person’s statements, that is, where A tells the court what B told him C said. Because the evidence is repeated by different people, there may be a likelihood of distortion from the original statements. The person who reports the words of another in addition may have misheard or misinterpreted them.

Thus, the main implications of the hearsay rule are as follows:
• Witnesses must give oral evidence. This is because the courts came to regard oral testimony by witnesses, who could be cross-examined on their testimony, as essential to a fair trial.
• Witnesses must give evidence from first-hand knowledge, and may not repeat what other people have told

Show More
Related

  • Stages Of The Criminal Trial Scott Peterson

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the opening statements both side of the case make opening statements to lay the foundation of their cases. Opening statements are not allowed to be argumentative and cannot be considered evidence by the jury; they are the road maps laying out where each side intends to take its case. First the prosecution presented its case. They alleged Peterson killed his wife in their Modesto home because he was having an affair, then drove her body nearly 100 miles to San Francisco Bay and heaved it overboard from his small boat. Prosecution offered a steady drum beat of small bits of circumstantial evidence. From the Russian poetry Peterson read his mistress to the fishing gear in his alibi to the dessert featured on a particular episode of Martha Stewart Living, it added up to Peterson's guilt, they suggested. The defense countered that Modesto authorities unfairly targeted Peterson, ignoring important leads that didn't fit their theory. Defense said that, while prosecutors had only assembled a circumstantial case, they had five witnesses that were direct evidence of Peterson's innocence.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Eyewitness Testimony

    550 Words  | 2 Pages

    The use of eyewitness statements and testimony’s can be a great source of information, but can also lead to wrongful convictions. Due to eyewitness testimony, innocent people are convicted of crimes they have not committed. This is why the wording of a question is important to consider when interviewing witnesses. Due to the fact that eyewitness testimony can be the most concrete evidence in an investigation, witnesses may feel they are helping an officer by giving them as much information as possible, therefore they may tell them information that is not entirely true, just to please them. This is why there are advantages and disadvantages to using open and close ended questioning at different durations of an interview. The way you word a question may impact the memory of a witness, this is because a person cannot completely memorize the exact occurrences of an event.

    Read More

  • Looking at Eyewitness TEstimony

    433 Words  | 1 Pages

    With all these possible flaws in the testimony of witnesses and victims why do they continue to use them as primary evidence in criminal cases? The answer is simple; until recently there was no other way to prove whether or not a person was actually at the scene of a crime unless someone saw them or they left some finger prints behind that the police were able to link back to someone, which may have not been left on the victim but in the general vicinity. Until recently, with the recent breakthrough in DNA testing which allows police and investigators to gain an exact match as to who committed the crime.

    Read More

  • The Government is Hiding Extraterrestrial Information from Roswell

    1658 Words  | 4 Pages

    Witness One who can give a firsthand account of something seen, heard, or experienced: a witness to the accident One who furnishes evidence 2. Something that serves as evidence; a sign

    Read More

  • What Is Eyewitness Misidentification In Criminal Justice

    508 Words  | 2 Pages

    The court must find more evidence and not to depend on eyewitness testimony and to look for the best people as possible. Besides, there more evidence that DNA testing. Eyewitness must be proven in order to arrest the right suspect and question the suspect to get more evidence in steady of keeping in prison for false witness. The police for tracking everywhere the suspect went and people the suspect contact with that time. It will solve the problem by asking the eyewitness question and the suspect questions to see if both things they said

    Read More

  • confrontation clause

    655 Words  | 2 Pages

    A confrontation issue could also arise in situations where a person would be considered “unavailable”. Such as, if a person refuses to testify, can’t remember the situation, or worse case scenario, has died. In this case then the courts would need to decide if the unavailable witness statement can be used at trial, this would depend on the hearsay exceptions.

    Read More

  • Anatomy of a Murder: Four Expert Witnesses

    1469 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to the Federal Rule of Evidence 702, A witness who is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise if: (a) the expert’s scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue; (b) the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data; (c) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and (d) the expert has reliably applied the principles and methods to the facts of the case (Gardner & Anderson, 2013 pg. 523).

    Read More

  • The Reliability of Eyewitness Testimony

    952 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the court of law, eyewitnesses are expected to present evidence based upon information they acquired visually. However, due to memory processing, presenting this information accurately is not always possible. This paper will discuss the reliability of eyewitness testimony, its use in a relevant court case, and how the reasonable person standard relates to eyewitness testimony.

    Read More

  • Eyewitness Testimonies Essay

    1332 Words  | 3 Pages

    In recent years, the use of eyewitness testimonies as evidence in court cases has been a subject in which various researchers have been interested in. Research suggests that eyewitness testimonies are actually not reliable enough to use as primary evidence in court cases. There have been many cases in which an innocent person gets sent to prison for a crime they did not commit because an eyewitness testified that they were the ones that they saw at the scene of the crime. Researchers’ goal is to improve the legal system by finding out whether eyewitness testimonies should be used in the court of law or not.

    Read More

  • The Problem With Eyewitness Testimony

    2505 Words  | 6 Pages

    Eyewitness testimony is “the provision of formal evidence on the basis of events experienced by the party” (Towl). History has shown that eyewitness identifications can often be unreliable. Since as far back as biblical times, people have questioned the validity of witnesses. The issue is even addressed in the US Constitution, which states that “two witnesses to the same overt act” are needed for a conviction of treason. Scientists have been disputing the credibility of eyewitness testimony, with experiments dating back to the early 20th century. In 1908, Harvard professor Hugo Münsterberg warned against dangero...

    Read More

  • Witness for the Prosecution

    883 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...en of proof falling on his shoulders, Mr. Myers presented a solid case with seemingly creditable witnesses against Vole (Neubauer & Fradella, 2014, p. 33). Much to Mr. Myers chagrin, Sir Wildrid argued for the defense of his client and provided insight or evidence to discredit all three witnesses for the prosecution (Neubauer & Fradella, 2014, p. 33). While “Witness for the Prosecution” was fictional, the movie yielded “whether you were lying then or are you lying now”, which is an expression frequently used in courtrooms today (Hornblow & Wilder, 1957).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Res Gestae: Law Of Evidence

    803 Words  | 2 Pages

    2.  Res Gestae is an exception to the rule against hearsay evidence.  Res gestae is based on the belief that because certain statements are made naturally, spontaneously and without deliberation during the course of an event, thus the courts believe that such statements carry a high degree of credibility.  Res gestae is a Latin phrase means "the thing done". 2 Res Gestae, Topic 3, law of evidence. Prepare by ikram Abdul Sattar

    Read More

  • Importance Of Hearsay Rule

    1065 Words  | 3 Pages

    They must also be under oath and subject to cross-examination instead of having someone to repeat what they said out of court. Therefore, they have to appear in front of the person being accused of committing the crime and make their statement in front of them as well as the judge and

    Read More

  • The Importance of Eyewitness Testimony

    628 Words  | 2 Pages

    Witnesses are often called before a court of law to testify in trials and their testimony is considered crucial in the identification and arrest of a suspect and the likelihood of a jury convicting a defendant.

    Read More

  • Memory

    546 Words  | 2 Pages

    Eyewitness testimony is especially vulnerable to error when the question is misleading or when there’s a difference in ethnicity. However, using an eyewitness as a source of evidence can be risky and is rarely 100% accurate. This can be proven by the theory of the possibility of false memory formation and the question of whether or not a memory can lie. For instance, a group of students saw the face of a young man with straight hair, then heard a description of the face supposedly written by another witness, one that wrongly mentioned light, curly hair. When they reconstructed the face using a kit of facial features, a third of their reconstructions contained the misleading detail, whereas only 5 percent contained it when curly hair was not mentioned (Page 359). This situation shows how misleading information from other sources can be profoundly altered.

    Read More

More about Purpose Of Hearsay

Open Document