## Facts

- Stephen English reported to neighbors that his wife had been murdered.
- A physician later testified that Mrs. English had been dead for at least six hours before English raised the alarm.
- A third party was detained the next day and gave an out-of-court confession stating he killed Mrs. English and describing details of the scene.
- After confessing, the third party disappeared and was unavailable at English’s trial.
- A witness testified English earlier offered him “a truck and money” to kill Mrs. English; when the witness refused, English allegedly entered the house with a shovel, the witness heard the shovel strike something, and English then left with the witness.
- At trial, English sought to introduce the third party’s confession to show someone else committed the murder; the trial court excluded it as hearsay.

## Issues

1. Whether an unavailable third party’s out-of-court confession that he committed the charged homicide is admissible to exculpate the defendant or is barred as hearsay.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of North Carolina affirmed the conviction.
- The court held the third party’s confession was inadmissible hearsay when offered to prove the truth of the assertion that the third party, not the defendant, committed the murder.
- The court relied on prevailing precedent characterizing such confessions as unreliable because they are unsworn and not subject to cross-examination.

## Legal Principles

- An out-of-court confession by a third party, offered for its truth to show the third party committed the crime, is hearsay.
- When the confessing declarant is unavailable at trial, the confession is inadmissible under the then-controlling common-law hearsay rule because it lacks oath and cross-examination safeguards.
- A defendant’s attempt to shift guilt to a third party does not, by itself, make an unavailable third party’s confession admissible.

## Conclusion

The court upheld English’s murder conviction and sustained the exclusion of an absent third party’s confession, applying the common-law hearsay rule that barred unsworn, untested confessions offered to prove a third party’s guilt.


State v. English, 201 N.C. 295, 159 S.E. 318 (N.C. 1931)