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Cal. Evid. Code § 1238

Prior Statements of Witnesses

Applied in 24 court decisions — leading case 8 Cal. 4th 1060 - People v. Rodrigues (1994)

Most recently applied in People v. Neal (January 2021)

Enacted by Stats. 1965, Ch. 299.

How often courts cite this section

19691980199020002010202120
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

Evidence of a statement previously made by a witness is not made inadmissible by the hearsay rule if the statement would have been admissible if made by him while testifying and:

(a) The statement is an identification of a party or another as a person who participated in a crime or other occurrence;

(b) The statement was made at a time when the crime or other occurrence was fresh in the witness’ memory; and

(c) The evidence of the statement is offered after the witness testifies that he made the identification and that it was a true reflection of his opinion at that time.

Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.