Murder trial. Defence application to introduce a statement made by a third party who when asked by police, “well, did you kill him?”, responded sarcastically: “yeah, I killed him, fuck.”
Held: Statement not admitted.
Necessity requirement met, as the witness had no memory of making the statement. Threshold reliability not established. Trial judge has a “gatekeeper” role. “The evidence before me suggests that there is a real concern regarding the inherent reliability of the statement. The statement’s recipients – the two police officers – clearly did not interpret the statement as the ‘truth’, but rather the sarcastic response to a sarcastic question.”
M. O’Shaughnessy – Defence Counsel