On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Blanc wrote:
(On a piece of paper they asked me to write down some of the statements I made regarding my limited association with Toto (for the record, in lieu of a court appearance)
My evidence books are packed in a moving box (sigh) at the moment, so please take this with a grain of salt, but the only reason I see to ask you to write anything down is to use it against you, either as a witness or as a defendant. Your written statement is considered hearsay and wouldn't be admissible at Toto's trial .. unless the prosecution was using it to impeach you in the event that you testified, in which case it would be admissible solely for the purpose of making you look like a liar. (If the statement also tends to cast Toto in a poor light, the prosecution probably won't lose any sleep over the spillover effects on the jury.) If either side in a trial (especially a criminal trial) thinks you've got something useful to say, they're going to need to put you on the witness stand in front of the jury/judge and let you make your statements, and be cross-examined, in person. Statements made out of court won't be admissible to prove the truth of the matter they're discussing, unless the situation happens to fit into one of a series of narrow exceptions. One of the biggest exceptions is called "statements made by the opposing party", aka "statements by the defendant" in a criminal trial. Another is to impeach a witness with a prior inconsistent statement, where the prior statement is inconsistent with their testimony at trial. It smells like a setup to me. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@netbox.com