Seymour Flops
Diamond Member
- Thread starter
- #21
I see that you're getting roasted for that statement, so I won't join in the roasting. Instead, in the spirit of helping, I'll explain what hearsay is, and why it is almost never used as evidence.She was there and overheard people talking to one another. That is not hearsay.
When a person goes to court and says that they saw X happen, i.e. "I saw that defendant point a gun at the bank teller and demand money," that is direct evidence that he can testify too under oath. If another person goes to court and says, "my wife is a bank teller and she told me that that defendant pointed a gun at her and demanded the money," that is almost never used as evidence, for two main reasons:
1) Every time a story is told and retold, it loses fidelity. Did you ever play the "telephone game," as a kid? One person whispers something to another, who repeats it to another, and so on. By four or five repetitions, it has completely changed. Often it has changed to something having no apparent relationship with the original statement, or is an exaggerated or sensationalized version of the original.
2) With hearsay, the actual witness to the event is not the one under oath. In the bank robber example, if the defendant proves six ways to Sunday that he could not have been the person that robbed the bank, the husband of the teller has no exposure to being prosecuted for perjury. He never said that the accused pointed a gun, he only said that his wife told him that the accused pointed a gun.
Cassidy will never be prosecuted for that absurd story, even if the Secret Service supervisor manages to prove that he never said what she claims that he said. As we learned from the Clintons, just lying under oath is not perjury, it has to be a lie about a material fact. Cassidy's attorney's would simply argue that her statement was not material, because it was hearsay.