Kenneth Arnold Wahl v. State of Alaska

Summary

The court affirmed the exclusion of an unavailable witness's grand jury testimony because the defendant did not use reasonable means to secure the witness's attendance. It held that the former-testimony exception requires a similar, not identical or equally intense, motive to develop testimony, and that the State's grand-jury and trial motives were sufficiently similar. It also held that the lower courts applied too demanding a trustworthiness standard to the defendant's residual-exception claim, but that error did not affect the outcome because the witness was not unavailable. The dissent would have found the witness unavailable and ordered a new trial.