Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma Finds Victim’s Statement to Unavailable Detective Didn’t Satisfy the Residual Hearsay Exception
Like its federal counterpart, the Oklahoma Rules of Evidence contain a residual exception to the rule against hearsay. Specifically, 12 O.S.2021, § 2804.1 provides in pertinent part:
A. In exceptional circumstances a statement not covered by Section 2803, 2804, 2805, or 2806 of this title but possessing equivalent, though not identical, circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness, is not excluded by the hearsay rule if the court determines that:
1. The statement is offered as evidence of a fact of consequence;
2. The statement is more probative on the point for which it is offered than any other evidence that the proponent can procure through reasonable efforts; and
3. The general purposes of this Code and the interests of justice will best be served by admission of the statement into evidence.
This is a tough standard to satisfy, and it’s one that the defense could not fulfill in Rodriguez v. State, 580 P.3d 268 (Okla. 2025).
In Rodriguez, Rolando Rodriguez was tried by jury and found guilty of domestic assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
After he was convicted, he appealed, claiming, inter alia, that the trial judge erred by precluding him from using the residual hearsay exception to introduce inconsistent statements the victim made to a detective who was unavailable to testify at trial. While the victim otherwise said she was attacked by Rodriguez, she told this detective that her injuries came from an accident.
In rejecting this appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma ruled as follows:
We find no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s conclusion that this was not a trustworthy statement admissible under the residual hearsay exception. The proffered statement lacked any traditional indicia of reliability for statements admissible as an exception to the rule against hearsay. The statement was allegedly inconsistent with the declarant’s other hearsay statement and was offered either as substantive evidence to show that it was the true statement—that the injury was an accident—or as impeachment, i.e., that the victim’s statements were generally unreliable and unworthy of belief. Such a statement obviously does not satisfy the trustworthiness requirements of Section 2804.1.