Lucy on the witness stand: “Robert said he saw the defendant murder the guy on the night in question.”
“Objection, hearsay!” What is the lawyer objecting to? He’s objecting that Lucy is testifying to what Robert said he saw on the night in question. Hey, the semi-competent lawyer says, why should Lucy be testifying about what Robert said?
Good question. Insert the “Rule Against Hearsay.” The Rule Against Hearsay, at its heart, is saying “drag Robert up out of bed and to the courthouse so that he, not Lucy, may answer for what he saw. That way Robert will be subject to the defense attorney’s cross-examination.”
I mean, if you’re going to say I killed someone, at least come here and say it to my face so that if I did do it, I can get a good look at you so that you might be next.
This rule against hearsay, although byzantine to follow at times, has good intentions, and it stems from our right under the Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution to be confronted with the witnesses against us.
It used to be that, in days of old, tribunals would hear all kinds of statements from witnesses, written up outside of court and then brought into court to be read aloud. The person who said the statement was nowhere to be found, but that didn’t prevent the court from hearing the statement and using it against the defendant during the “trial.” That doesn’t sound very fair, does it?
After a few revolutions and several impromptu beheadings later, we finally came around to the idea that maybe we shouldn’t decapitate someone based on what someone else said, without that someone else being brought to court to be questioned.
“Hey, Pat, so they’re going to hang Rupert in the town square for what you said you saw Rupert do to that lady. You remember, Rupert, right? Yeah, he’s got a wife and three kids. Well anyway, he’s scheduled to get the rope tomorrow, right in the middle of lunch. Do you want to go talk to the king about how you said to me after your 5th goblet of mead that maybe it wasn’t Rupert who you saw that night? That maybe your horse-and-buggy was moving too fast, that it was midnight so it was pitch dark, and that maybe it was another guy with brown hair and a feathered cap? I mean they’re going to execute him, Pat, shouldn’t you say something?”
I can’t help but think of My Cousin Vinny when Vinny, the defense attorney in the case played by Joe Pesci, holds up two fingers (twice) in the courtroom for the sweet old lady (“Mrs. Riley, and ONLY Mrs. Riley…”) to correctly guess the amount of fingers he’s holding up. Mrs. Riley, who is wearing coke-bottle glasses, says she saw the two boys (the two defendants) from 100 feet away as the exact same boys who left the Sack-O’-Suds at the time the victim was shot and killed.
Turns out the Mrs. Riley’s vision was that of a bat, the flying kind, and maybe, just maybe, it’d be a good idea to gather more evidence than just her eyewitness testimony that she saw the two boys from a distance with glasses that look like two separate goldfish bowls held together.
So that’s what cross-examination is for. And that’s how it ties into hearsay. That’s why Mrs. Riley needed to be there in court. The weaknesses of eyewitness testimony—let alone from a distance of 100 feet—have been well-documented by now, and it’s a good thing Vinny was hitting his stride as a defense attorney at about this point in the trial. Without Mrs. Riley there to display her lack of vision—and without the help of Marisa Tomei’s expert testimony—those two boys would’ve gotten the chair.
Unfortunately, we’ve executed millions of people over the course of history based on circumstances like this. Whether they did it or not, we’ll never know, but at least we’ve advanced far enough to have laws and rules that compel a witness to come in and testify in court as to what they saw.
I agree, Pat should go talk to the king, but then he will probably get the rope himself for trying to deprive the king’s people of some wholesome family entertainment during lunchtime.
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