Recorded recollection

On May 4, 7:23 am, Hermes <manning...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This might seem a bit sketchy, but if a witness doesn't have any
> "independant recollection" of events and their entire testimony is
> taken from notes, can the witness be deemed incompetent?

No.

I take it you're thinking of, frex, a cop who wrote a ticket 6 months or so before he has to testify about it at trial, and can't remember that one ticket as distinguished from the other umpteen tickets he wrote in the meantime except by reading frrom his notes.   Or, a doctor testifying about his treatment of a patient that occurred months, or years, before he is put on the witness stand, when he has treated zillions of other patients in the meantime and may also have treated the same patient for other, unrelated conditions too.   How else are these professionals going to keep the facts straight and accurate, not mixing up one case with another, other than by writing it down?  As you can probably guess, this is (a) done all the time, and (b) perfectly legal.

The key concept is "past recollection recorded" if you want to look it up in your state's evidence code.  As long as the witness can testify truthfully and competently, in the present day, that (a) he took careful, contemporaneous notes of the situation in question at a time when he had adequate opportunity to observe it (and all the other things that go into competency of a witness' testimony) and that (b) the paper he is referring to as he testifies today is a true and accurate copy (or the original) of those notes, the substance of his testimony comes into evidence just as if he was testifying from a present recollection.

Of course, the fact that he was testifying from notes rather than memory also obviously becomes evidence the jury can consider, and that goes to the weight of his testimony and his credibility.  If it is the kind of thing the jury would reasonably expect a person to remember, a once-in-a-lifetime and maybe scary kind of thing for an Average Joe witness, his testimony may smell a little fishy if he has to rely on notes instead of having the event etched into his memory forever.   But one ticket or one patient visit out of hundreds is not something a professional like a cop or a doctor would be expected to remember independently of his notes,

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