Stevens v. People

I agree with the analysis of the majority in Part II, section A, of the opinion holding that a statement against penal interest is not a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule. However, I respectfully dissent from the majority's Part II, section B which holds that the accomplice's statement in this case contains sufficient guarantees of trustworthiness to rebut the presumption that such statements are inherently unreliable. In my view, the accomplice's statement possesses simultaneous indicators of both unreliability and reliability and thereby fails to rebut the heavy presumption of…