Hojan v. State

I agree with the majority’s decision to affirm Hojan’s convictions and death sentences. I concur in result only because of my concerns regarding the majority’s treatment of the merits of the excited utterance issue and its harmless error analysis. I thus write to address the issue of whether the victim’s responses to police questioning constitute excited utterances and emphasize that the harmless error test is not one based on whether there is “overwhelming” evidence.

The objectionable statements were the victim’s responses to leading questions by police during an interrogation. Although the…