Hearsay Testimony

The rules of evidence regarding the admissibility of hearsay testimony are complex, but in general, the law treats hearsay as inadmissible evidence. A number of exceptions to this general rule exist, however, and psychologists have conducted research to examine how jurors evaluate and use hearsay testimony in their decision making. No simple conclusions can be drawn at this point from the research literature owing to the large [Page 355]number of variables that undoubtedly influence juror perceptions of hearsay witnesses.

Hearsay is an out-of-court statement made by an individual (the declarant) that is offered as evidence in court by another individual (the witness, but referred to here as the “hearsay witness” for clarity) to prove the truth of the matter asserted. Repeating a declarant's statement in court is hearsay if the witness is trying to convince the jury that what the declarant said is true, whereas it would not be hearsay if the witness is trying to show that the declarant speaks English, for example. Concerns about the trustworthiness of hearsay arise because the declarant was not under oath at the time of the statement, the demeanor of the declarant while uttering the statement cannot be observed by the jury, and cross-examination of the hearsay witness may not reveal shortcomings in the declarant's statement. The hearsay rule therefore establishes that hearsay is not admissible except in situations where there is some reason to believe that the declarant's statement is trustworthy. The Federal Rules of Evidence identify certain exceptions that are allowed only when the declarant is unavailable to testify (e.g., a statement made under the belief of impending death or a statement against selfinterest), whereas other exceptions exist regardless of the declarant's availability (e.g., an excited utterance or statements made for purposes of medical diagnosis). The question of whether statements falling within these exceptions are truly more trustworthy (and thus more useful) to a jury than are statements currently excluded as hearsay is one potential avenue of research that has not yet been explored.

The vast majority of studies examining how jurors evaluate hearsay testimony have used either college students or adult community members as mock jurors, although at least one study presented written questionnaires to jurors who had just delivered a verdict in an actual case that involved hearsay. Evidence has been presented to mock jurors in a variety of ways; frequently, researchers provide participants with written trial summaries, but other studies have used either audiotapes or videotapes of trials or forensic interviews in which the critical variables are experimentally manipulated. Researchers have examined variables related to the declarant (e.g., the declarant's age), the hearsay witness (e.g., his or her relationship to the declarant), how the declarant made his or her statement (e.g., whether a suggestive or nonsuggestive form of questioning was used), and when the statement was made (e.g., the amount of time between the event and the declaration).

One basic question is whether jurors even distinguish between hearsay and nonhearsay evidence. Research into how jurors evaluate hearsay evidence began with studies comparing evidence presented by an eyewitness with the same information presented by a hearsay witness (therefore, the hearsay used in these studies would have been ruled inadmissible). Results suggest that jurors do not overvalue hearsay but instead seem to use the information in an appropriate way. The few studies examining the impact of judicial instructions to disregard inadmissible hearsay have led to mixed results regarding the instructions, but the results are generally consistent with the finding that hearsay is not overvalued as a form of evidence.

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