Dying Declaration: Civil-or-Criminal Scope

Revised stem

Paul had been a member of a Mediterranean antiquities-smuggling ring for 20 years. After receiving transactional immunity, he testified against other members and later published a book describing crimes he had committed, including Stephen's death. Stephen's wife Ruth then brought a wrongful-death civil action. At trial, a museum curator testified that just before Stephen died, Stephen said, "I'm dying. I saw Paul strike me with the statue." The jurisdiction has a dead man's statute. If Paul moves to strike the curator's testimony, his motion should be:

Answer flow

01 Lock the forum: this is a civil wrongful-death case.

02 Lock the hearsay exception: FRE 804(b)(2), statement under belief of imminent death.

03 Check the elements: unavailable declarant, cause or circumstances of death, belief death was imminent.

04 Cut the named-fact traps: transactional immunity and dead man's statute do not control admissibility.

05 Deny the motion to strike.

A / trap

EAR_FALSITY / flat_misstatement

denied, since the jurisdiction has a dead man's statute.

A dead man's statute is exclusionary, not admission-creating. It is not the reason this statement comes in.

B / trap

EAR_FALSITY / fabricated_rule

granted, since Paul received transactional immunity.

Transactional immunity prevents criminal prosecution by the government. It does not bar a private civil action or decide a hearsay motion.

C / correct

residue / FRE 804(b)(2)

denied, since Stephen believed himself to be dying when he made the statement.

The declarant is unavailable, the statement concerns the cause or circumstances of the believed-impending death, and FRE 804(b)(2) applies in a civil case.

D / trap

EAR_OVERCLAIM / tiered_absolute

granted, since a dying declaration is admissible only in a trial for criminal homicide.

The common-law limit is the trap. FRE 804(b)(2) covers a homicide prosecution or a civil case.

C3 locks

Red axis: Element-check FRE 804(b)(2) before reacting to the stem's immunity and statute distractors.

Purple profile: The answer set surrounds the right hearsay exception with three official-sounding but forum-mismatched reasons.

Blue signal: The word only in the criminal-homicide choice is trap-side polarity because the FRE expanded the scope.

Orange repair: Student habit to repair: treating named legal phrases as dispositive without asking what each doctrine actually does.

Reusable keys

Gold Key / GK-EVIDENCE-DYING-DECL-01
FRE 804(b)(2) admits a dying declaration in a homicide prosecution or in a civil case. Criminal-homicide-only is the old common-law trap.

Silver Key / SK-EVIDENCE-DYING-DECL-01
When a stem names a statute, ask what the statute does before accepting the answer choice's use of it.

Trap Key / TK-EVIDENCE-IMMUNITY-FORUM-MISMATCH
Transactional immunity is a criminal-procedure shield, not a civil evidence rule.

LeadMe steps

01 State the forum before naming the exception.

02 Say the FRE 804(b)(2) scope out loud: homicide prosecution or civil case.

03 Cross out the choice that says only criminal homicide.

04 Explain why immunity does not answer a civil evidence question.

05 Bank the Gold Key and run one scope-flip drill.

Drill seeds