Illinois’ Hearsay Law

We count on our law enforcement agencies and our court systems to maintain our country as a safe environment as well as to provide a legal system that is both fair and honest for all Americans.

Throughout our history we have changed laws and our viewpoints when necessary such as when Miranda rights started being used by police officers across the country after the case Miranda vs. Arizona was see in the United Sates Supreme Court.

In that case, a man by the name of Ernesto Miranda was arrested for the rape and robbery of a seventeen year old girl in the Phoenix, Arizona area in March 1963. Miranda signed a confession that night and was convicted to spend twenty plus years in prison for the crime.

Then Miranda’s legal counsel appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court on the grounds that Miranda’s confession had been coerced out of him and that Miranda was never told at any time that he had the right to remain silent nor the right to have an attorney present when being interrogated.

Arizona’s Supreme Court upheld the conviction and so then Miranda took his plea to the United States Supreme Court, which at that time included Chief Justice Earl Warren, who’s “Warren court” was making sweeping changes in law, racial progression and making the states adhere more closely to Federal law.

This time Miranda’s appeal worked and the Supreme Court overturned the decision. Although Miranda himself had another trial and served his prison time, many in law enforcement thought this would impede them from doing their jobs properly. In the end, both sides could be said to be right as it was wrong for any American being arrested to not know their rights but it was equally wrong to give criminals any more fuel to get out of going to jail.

Today, of course, we all know of Miranda rights from the time we were little kids and would play cops and robbers. Telling the crook their rights just like the police officers on television was great fun, and all was forgotten, the sun still rose and the universe moved forward.

What about those criminals the law did let go? Was taking the moral high ground the better choice? Well, today we have “Drew’s Law” to contemplate and I’m not so sure if we made the right choice on this one as a country and a nation despite outward appearances that may make it look otherwise.

Drew’s Law is a controversial law that arose out of the Drew Peterson case in Illinois, my home state. In case you were not aware Drew Peterson is a former Boilingbrook, Illinois police officer that was being investigated for the death of his third wife Kathleen Savio and the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.

In the course of the investigations into the two affairs, although the investigating bodies and the general public that followed along had a good idea that Drew Peterson was in fact guilty, there was no way to prove it in a manner fit for a court of law…until Drew’s Law came into play.

Drew’s Law make hearsay evidence admissible in Illinois’ courts as long as the case meets the following conditions at a pre-trial hearing:

1) first, that the adverse party murdered the declarant and that the murder was intended to cause the unavailability of the declarant as a witness;

(2) second, that the time, content, and circumstances of the statements provide sufficient safeguards of reliability

(3) third, the interests of justice will best be served by admission of the statement into evidence.

Although it may seem from the above that this exception can only be used in certain types of cases where the court may avoid having egg on it’s face and can convict criminals that may otherwise go free, it also opens up a very creaky door we may have a hard time shutting. Once one law is adopted like this, you can almost be sure that others will eventually follow.

The situation is so odd that even one of the jury members, Ron Supalo, understood and observed how much history they had just made with a guilty verdict for Peterson: “We (the jurors) weren’t the U.S. Supreme Court. Right or wrong, this was the hearsay law, and we had to use it in this case.”

Personally I’d rather not have a law like this one on any state’s books, regardless of how much Drew Peterson deserves to hang, much like in the Casey Anthony case, sometimes our laws bind us into bad situations. However, I still will always believe our laws and our Constitution should be maintained to the standards we set when trying to make a legal system that was fair and honorable for every American.

Even if that honor means letting someone go now and again, we will always catch them in the end and they will only escape incarceration, not the punishment they will catch from God for such horrible acts.