Louisiana Evidence Law: The Admissibility of Suicide Notes

Abstract

On April 9, 2001, Courtney Garza, a twenty-one-year-old student at Southeastern University in Hammond, committed suicide by hanging herself in her parents’ Baton Rouge home. Courtney left behind a hand-written, nine-page suicide note alleging her depression and state of mind was the result of a rape that occurred three months prior. It is clear from Courtney’s note that the alleged rape caused her to enter into a deep state of depression which resulted in her taking her own life. Without Courtney’s statements regarding the alleged rape, the line of causation is severed and the action she took ending her life becomes an independent intervening force leaving Paul Upshaw and the Delta Tau Delta Fraternity free from liability. However, analyzing Courtney’s statements as non-hearsay state of mind, inferring the negligent wrongs of the defendants caused Courtney’s mental illness resulting in an uncontrollable impulse to commit suicide. Therefore, the defendants should have been held liable for her death. This ruling makes the state of the Courtney’s mind shortly before death, extremely relevant to the negligent acts of the defendants, and the suicide note admissible as evidence of that state of mind. Louisiana Supreme Court was wrong in addressing Courtney’s suicide note thoroughly under the hearsay dying declaration exception. Rather parts of the note should have been admissible under the hearsay then existing state of mind exception while other parts should have been admissible as non-hearsay because the statements in the note were being offered to prove the condition of Courtney’s state of mind at the time she took her life. It is evident that suicide notes, as a whole, should be analyzed statement by statement to determine its admissibility. Taken as a whole, or in large parts, each statement is not given the weight and significance, as it should. When correctly applied, the state of mind exception to the hearsay rule and the non-hearsay state of mind area of law, determine the admissibility of statements in suicide notes. While these two concepts are often confused, a full understanding of the similarities and differences between the two will yield an accurate result when applied correctly to suicide notes.