The Problem of Using Hearsay in Domestic Violence Cases: Is a New Exception the Answer?

Abstract

On the morning of September 6, 1993, the Honolulu Police Department received a report of a screaming female at a condominium complex. Upon his arrival at the scene, the responding officer observed a woman, Diana, bleeding from her chest. Diana told the responding officer, and then the emergency room physician, that her husband had stabbed her. Later that day, a police investigator conducted a tape-recorded interview with Diana at the hospital. Diana told the investigator that after a long argument her husband had jumped on her and, when she screamed, had put his hand on her throat. After punching her in the back, she said, he threw her in the closet and stabbed her with a kitchen knife. At her husband’s trial for attempted second-degree murder, however, Diana’s testimony was dramatically different—she claimed that the story she had given to the police was a lie and that she had grabbed the knife and stabbed herself. Diana’s testimony presented the prosecutors with a serious problem. The only witness to the incident, Diana, was not willing to testify against her husband. The statements she had made to the police and medical personnel on the day of the incident were the prosecutor’s only potential evidence, but they were classic hearsay. The