In the Case of Cox V

In the case of Cox v. State, the Indiana defendant was convicted of a domestic abuse charge for beating his girlfriend. When police officers encountered the girlfriend, she was crying and shaking and appeared to be very upset. The officer also noticed that she was talking very quickly and showed signs of a fresh injury, including a cut above her eye that was bleeding; her left eye was swollen; and she was holding an ice pack to her eye. Additionally, she had marks on her neck that appeared to have been caused by someone grabbing her on the neck. A deputy who heard the victim's story told the court what the victim told him while she was crying and upset. The defendant contended that the excited utterance should not have been applied by the trial court so as to permit the officer to testify what the girlfriend told him. In the decision in this case, the reviewing court found that:

A) the trial court should not have allowed the officer to testify because the injury by the boyfriend should not have resulted in an excitement that would have lasted until police arrived.
B) this qualified as an excited utterance by the victim and was non-testimonial in nature and the officer laid the correct foundation sufficient to prove that an exciting event occurred and that the victim talked to the officer prior to cooling down from her being beaten by the boyfriend.
C) in order for the spontaneous utterance hearsay exception to apply, the victim must state affirmatively that she fears death from her attacker, and there was no proof that she felt that he would kill her at some point in time.
D) the trial court should not have allowed the officer to testify because the girlfriend's statement to the officer was testimonial in nature and was told to him out of court and thus qualified as excludable hearsay evidence that was probably not reliable.