excited utterance doctrine

On February 1, 2001, Michelle McCottry placed a 911 call reporting that her former boyfriend Adrian Davis was beating her with his fists inside her house. The 911 operator asked a series of questions about the location, whether weapons were involved, whether Davis had been drinking, his full name and middle initial, and his current actions. McCottry answered that Davis had just run out the door and was leaving in a car. Police arrived within four minutes, observed fresh injuries on McCottry's face and forearm along with her shaken state, and noted her efforts to gather her belongings and children. Davis was charged with felony violation of a domestic no-contact order. At trial McCottry did not appear, and the court admitted the 911 recording over Davis's Confrontation Clause objection, leading to his conviction, which the Washington Court of Appeals and Supreme Court affirmed. On February 26, 2003, police responded late at night to a reported domestic disturbance at the home of Hershel and Amy Hammon. Upon arrival Amy Hammon appeared somewhat frightened on the front porch but initially stated nothing was the matter. After officers entered and separated the couple, one officer questioned Amy in the living room while the other stayed with Hershel in the kitchen. Amy described a verbal argument that became physical, including Hershel breaking the furnace, lamps, and phone, shoving her into broken glass, and punching her in the chest. Amy then completed and signed a battery affidavit stating those events. Hershel was charged with domestic battery and probation violation. At his bench trial Amy did not appear, and the court admitted the officer's recounting of her statements as excited utterances along with the affidavit over objection. The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed Hershel's convictions, and the Indiana Supreme Court held Amy's oral statements nontestimonial while finding the affidavit testimonial but its admission harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in both Davis v. Washington and the consolidated Hammon v. Indiana cases to address the testimonial character of the statements. The evidence introduced at each trial consisted solely of the out-of-court statements, as neither victim appeared to testify and no other witnesses could identify the assailant or describe the cause of the injuries.

In the early morning hours of April 16, 1988, four-year-old S. G. was sexually assaulted in her home, where her babysitter Tony DeVore was awakened by her scream and went to the bedroom to witness petitioner leaving the room before he departed the house, and DeVore knew petitioner as a friend of S. G.’s mother Tammy Grigsby. DeVore then questioned S. G., who stated that petitioner had put his hand over her mouth, choked her, threatened to whip her if she screamed, and touched her in the wrong places, specifically identifying the vaginal area as the location of the touching. Approximately thirty minutes later, Grigsby returned home and found her daughter scared and hyperactive, prompting her to question S. G. about the events, after which S. G. repeated claims that petitioner had choked and threatened her and stated that petitioner had put his mouth on her front part; Grigsby noticed bruises and red marks on S. G.’s neck that had not been there previously and called the police. Officer Terry Lewis arrived about forty-five minutes after the scream and questioned S. G. alone in the kitchen, receiving a similar account that included the detail that petitioner had used his tongue on her private parts. Roughly four hours after the incident, S. G. was taken to the hospital, where emergency room nurse Cheryl Reents and Dr. Michael Meinzen examined her, and in response to their questioning S. G. provided an account essentially identical to those given earlier to DeVore, Grigsby, and Lewis. S. G. never testified at petitioner’s trial despite two attempts by the State to call her as a witness, as she experienced emotional difficulty on being brought to the courtroom and left without testifying each time, while the defense made no attempt to call her and the trial court neither made nor was asked to make a finding that S. G. was unavailable to testify. Petitioner was convicted by a jury of aggravated criminal sexual assault, residential burglary, and unlawful restraint after the trial court overruled his hearsay objections and admitted the out-of-court statements through the testimony of DeVore, Grigsby, Lewis, Reents, and Meinzen under Illinois exceptions for spontaneous declarations and statements made in the course of securing medical treatment, and the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the conviction on the ground that the trial court had properly applied the state-law hearsay exceptions, the Illinois Supreme Court denied discretionary review, and the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari limited to the constitutional question whether permitting the challenged testimony violated petitioner’s Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause right.

In 2001 Boston police officers received a tip that a Kmart employee was engaging in suspicious activity involving repeated short trips in a blue sedan. Officers set up surveillance in the parking lot, observed the described sequence of events, detained the employee upon his return, and discovered four clear plastic bags containing a substance resembling cocaine. The officers then arrested the two men in the car, one of whom was petitioner Luis Melendez-Diaz. The officers placed all three suspects in a police cruiser. During the short drive to the police station the officers observed their passengers fidgeting and making furtive movements in the back of the car. After depositing the men at the station they searched the police cruiser and found a plastic bag containing nineteen smaller bags hidden in the partition between the front and back seats. The officers submitted the seized substances to the State Laboratory Institute of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which was required by law to conduct chemical analysis upon police request. Analysts at the laboratory performed the tests on November 28, 2001, and prepared three certificates of analysis that reported the weight of the bags and stated that the substance was found to contain cocaine. Each certificate was sworn before a notary public by the analysts, as required under Massachusetts law, and reprinted the statutory provision making the certificates prima facie evidence of the composition, quality, and net weight of the narcotic analyzed. Melendez-Diaz was charged with distributing cocaine and trafficking in cocaine in an amount between 14 and 28 grams. At trial the prosecution introduced the bags seized from the codefendant and from the cruiser along with the three certificates. Petitioner objected to admission of the certificates, asserting that Crawford v. Washington required the analysts to testify in person. The trial court overruled the objection and admitted the certificates pursuant to the state statute. The jury found Melendez-Diaz guilty. He appealed, contending that admission of the certificates violated his Sixth Amendment right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. The Appeals Court of Massachusetts affirmed the convictions, relying on a prior decision of the Supreme Judicial Court that had held forensic analysts are not subject to confrontation. The Supreme Judicial Court denied review, and the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.