People v. Nelson, D057195
By
FindLaw Staff
on December 20, 2010
| Last updated on March 21, 2019
No violation of Crawford right of confrontation
People v. Nelson, D057195, concerned a conviction of defendant for premeditated attempted murder with a finding that he personally discharged a firearm. In rejecting defendant's claim that his constitutional right to confront witnesses was violated by the admission of the victim's out-of-court statement identifying defendant as the perpetrator, the court held that the victim's brief statement, made on the night of the shooting in the ambulance when the victim was close to death, was nontestimonial, and as such trial court's admission of the statement did not violate defendant's rights under Crawford.
As the court wrote: "[t]he circumstances here involve an unidentified
shooter loose in the community, a single question requesting information
relevant to immediate public safety, a two-word response by a victim
while he was being rushed to the hospital with a potentially fatal
injury, and transmittal of the victim's statements to the police that
same night. They highly informal circumstances and brevity of the
inquiry concerning a basic question of identity on the night of the
incident reflect a response to an immediate situation rather than an
investigative purpose."
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