Reference no: EM133314171
Assignment:
THIS INCIDENT OCCURS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
The police dispatcher on the 911 emergency line receives the following call: "Please hurry to [victim's address]! My husband is trying to hit me with a baseball bat!" The call ends abruptly with a dull thud. Police find the victim unconscious next to her cellular phone in the bathroom. She has a fracture to her right eye socket.
The lock on the bathroom door is broken. There is no husband and no baseball bat in the home. He is arrested at work, and denies any knowledge of his wife's injuries.
When the victim regains consciousness, she steadfastly refuses to speak to police or prosecutors, or to testify in her husband's prosecution for felonious assault. The prosecution decides to go forward without her participation.
At the trial two weeks later, defense counsel offers a sworn affidavit by the victim to the effect that her husband did not strike her, but that she manufactured the entire case against him with the assistance of an anonymous friend, in order to have him arrested and to get him out of the house. Assume that this story is very improbable but not demonstrably impossible.
Is the 911 call admissible?
Is the victim's written statement admissible?