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70. Is the woman's statement to the police officer admissible to prove that the defendant sold cocaine?
By the time of the defendant's trial, the woman has left the country. The prosecutor calls the police officer to testify that the woman told him that the defendant was her cocaine supplier. The defendant's attorney objects.
A defendant has been charged with selling cocaine. On the night of the alleged sale, a police officer arrested a woman and found a large package of cocaine in her car. The woman was brought to the police station for questioning. During her interrogation, she admitted to a police officer that she had sold cocaine and said that she had obtained the cocaine from the defendant, who was a local supplier.
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B is incorrect. The prosecutor's failure to establish the woman's unavailability is not the reason that her statement is inadmissible. There is no hearsay exception that would make the woman's statement admissible to prove its truth, so the statement is inadmissible even if the prosecutor were to properly establish her unavailability.
C is incorrect. The woman's statement was made to a police officer following her arrest and not during a drug conspiracy with the defendant. The statement also did nothing to further a drug conspiracy, even if one did exist.
D is incorrect. A statement of a person, now unavailable as a witness, can be admissible if it was against that person's pecuniary, proprietary, or penal interest when made. To be admissible under the statement against interest exception, the statement must have been so against the declarant's pecuniary or proprietary interest or had so great a tendency to invalidate the declarant's claim against someone else or to expose the declarant to civil or criminal liability, that a reasonable person in the declarant's position would have made the statement only if she believed it to be true. Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(3).
Here, the portion of the woman's statement attributing fault to the defendant and suggesting that he was her drug supplier was not against the woman's penal interest. Rather, her statement was self-serving, shifting the blame to the defendant, and likely garnered her additional leniency regarding her own crimes due to her cooperation with the police.