Powell v. State

The defendant, Wayne Powell, appeals his conviction for capital sexual battery. He contends that the trial court erred by admitting two extrajudicial statements into evidence under the excited utterance exception to the hearsay rule. We conclude that both of these statements should have been excluded, because the declarants were recounting events that had taken place many years earlier and they were no longer under the stress of excitement from those events. Because we cannot say beyond a reasonable doubt that the error in admitting the statements was harmless, we reverse for a new trial.

By…