State v. Griffin
Louisiana Supreme Court
783 So. 2d 1241 (2001)
- Written by Abby Roughton, JD
Facts
The State of Louisiana (plaintiff) charged Dedrick Griffin (defendant) with the shooting deaths of Patrick Parker and Tiche Carter. The police report prepared by investigators included a statement from William Thomas indicating that after Carter was shot, Carter ran to Thomas’s apartment and told Thomas that Dennis shot him. Thomas died five days before Griffin’s trial. Griffin subsequently filed a motion asking the court to declare Thomas unavailable as a witness and to allow the admission of Thomas’s statement to the investigators under the dying-declaration exception to the hearsay rule, which allowed a statement made by a declarant who expected imminent death to be admitted if the statement concerned the cause or circumstances of the (expected) death and the declarant was unavailable as a witness. The trial court granted Griffin’s motion, and the appellate court denied the state’s request for review. The state then sought review in the Louisiana Supreme Court, arguing that the lower courts had improperly admitted the double hearsay of Carter’s statement to Thomas as recorded in Thomas’s statements to investigators in the police report.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Johnson, J.)
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