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THE POLICE OFFICER’S TESTIMONY ABOUT HOW THE DEFENDANT’S DAUGHTER, WHO DID NOT TESTIFY AT THE TRIAL, DESCRIBED THE ALLEGED STABBING WAS INADMISSBILE TESTIMONIAL HEARSAY; NEW TRIAL ORDERED (SECOND DEPT). ​

The Second Department, reversing defendant’s assault conviction, over a dissent, determined the police officer’s (Costello’s) testimony about the defendant’s daughter’s explanation of the alleged stabbing, which included a reinactment, was testimonial hearsay and should not have been admitted. The defendant’s daughter did not testify at the trial. In addition, the defendant’s son’s statement to the defendant at the scene (Why, why, why? Why did you stab my mom?”) should not have been admitted as an excited utterance because the son did not witness the alleged stabbing:

“Statements are nontestimonial when made in the course of police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency. They are testimonial when the circumstances objectively indicate that there is no such ongoing emergency, and that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution” … . To determine which of these categories an out-of-court statement falls into, a court should focus on “the purpose that the statement was intended to serve” … , and to ascertain “the ‘primary purpose’ of an interrogation,” a court should “objectively evaluate the circumstances in which the encounter occurs and the statements and actions of the parties” … .

… [T]he daughter’s statements to Costello regarding the circumstances under which the defendant had stabbed the victim were testimonial in nature. Viewing the record objectively, at the time the statements were made, there was no ongoing emergency. The victim had been removed from the scene and taken to a hospital. The defendant had been taken into custody and transported to a police station. Indeed, Costello testified that a detective was never even assigned to the case, precisely because the police already “had the alleged perpetrator in custody.” Although the daughter was still deeply upset as a result of the stabbing, she was not in need of police assistance, and it is clear that Costello’s questions were not asked for the purpose of facilitating such assistance. Rather, the primary purpose of Costello’s questioning of the daughter “was to investigate a possible crime” … . Costello “was not seeking to determine . . . what is happening, but rather what happened” … . Indeed, Costello expressly asked the daughter to “indicate to [him] what happened.” Moreover, Costello went beyond simply asking what happened and requested that the daughter describe and illustrate exactly how it happened using simple words and gestures. While the People argue that Costello requested the use of gestures merely to overcome a language barrier, the fact remains that he asked the daughter to convey information about past events. The daughter’s detailed account of those events, complete with a physical re-enactment of the crime, did “precisely what a witness does on direct examination,” and thus was “inherently testimonial” … . People v Vargas, 2022 NY Slip Op 07460, Second Dept 12-28-22

Practice Point: Here a police officer was allowed to testify about how defendant’s daughter described the alleged stabbing. The daughter did not testify at the trial. Because the officer was trying to ascertain what happened in the past (the defendant was already in custody), as opposed to “what is happening” during an emergency, what the daughter told the officer was testimonial hearsay which should not have been admitted. The decision includes a good explanation of the difference between testimonial and nontestimonial hearsay.

 

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