Case Law Bonus Post: Filteau v. Wanek

Outline:

• The application of various rules of evidence in a particular situation will sometimes turn on the identity of the person making a statement.
• If the proponent of the statement:
• Produces evidence that would permit a reasonable jury to find
• By a preponderance of the evidence
• That a given person made a particular statement
• The court must assume the statement was made by that person for purposes of assessing its admissibility.

Notes: There’s a division in legal practice between questions of fact and questions of law. The judge is the “trier of law:” they have the authority to decide questions of law. In jury trials, the jury is the “trier of fact:” they’re supposed to resolve factual questions. Objection arguments are always posing questions of law, which the judge is supposed to resolve, but sometimes that requires solving questions of fact. If, for instance, you’re using the party-opponent exemption to hearsay, we might have to settle a question of fact if it’s unclear who uttered the statement. This case law explains how to solve that problem when the issue is the identity of the person making a statement. The “proponent of the statement” (the person trying to enter it into evidence) has to persuade the judge that a reasonable jury could find by a preponderance of the evidence that the declarant is who they say it is. A preponderance of the evidence is the same burden of proof used for civil cases overall, and essentially means that the assertion being proved has a greater than fifty percent chance of being true, given the evidence. Notice that the proponent of the statement doesn’t actually have to prove the identity of the speaker by a preponderance of the evidence. They have to persuade the judge that a reasonable jury could conclude that, a slightly easier thing to do. If a judge does not personally believe it’s been proven by a preponderance of the evidence, but does think a jury could find that, the proponent of the statement has succeeded.