He was scheduled to appear for day two of his deposition testimony the morning of his death. Had he died Sat night instead of Sat morning, the transcript of Saturday's testimony could have been read to the jury during trial. Obviously that can't happen now and whatever he was going to say in Saturday's testimony is lost forever.
> In Barber v. Page, 390 U.S. 719 (1968), the Court recognized a common law exception to the Confrontation Clause's requirement when a witness was unavailable and, during previous judicial proceedings, had testified against the same defendant and was subject to cross-examination by that defendant. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this exception in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), holding that "the Framers would not have allowed admission of testimonial statements of a witness who did not appear at trial unless he was unavailable to testify and the defendant had had a prior opportunity for cross-examination." Further, the Court in Crawford overturned Ohio v. Roberts (above).
The article said he was cross-examined by Boeing's attorneys last week and he now unavailable because he's dead, so it seems to be his deposition would fall under this exception.
It does not apply to dying declarations and statements made under impending death, this is well established in law. [1] Otherwise mob bosses would just pop off every witness and go fully free if it is completely inadmissible . There are limits not everything is admissible however not everything can be thrown away either
And depositions are taken under oath, at least, so it is at least sworn testimony rather than just random conversations or documents that would normally need to be sworn to at trial to lay a foundation.
Boeing going to throw all their weight at motions to exclude these transcriptions, though.
Witnesses often write sign and submit a written witness statement into evidence before appearing. It's probably up to the judge now.
The written evidence gets sent to prosecution and defence. There would be a question whether witness actually did write the statement... but might be better than nothing
