Little did we know that robots found a way around hearsay decades ago.
Judge Thomas Hastings knew it then. He was pondering a hearsay objection to computer records being offered into evidence.
“This is a very hypertechnical objection,” he said in People v. Hawkins. “[T]he problem in this analysis is simply this: There is no declarant. The declarant is the computer. It’s not a person.”
Records admitted, and that’s how computers first got around the hearsay rule. Now they have taken another step in People v. Rodriguez.