ABSTRACT
The Latin expression ‘res gestae’ may be loosely translated as ‘events occurring’ or ‘things happening’. If a statement is said to be part of the res gestae, what is meant is that it is an out-of-court statement so closely associated with the circumstances in which it was made that it is likely to be more reliable than other evidence of out-of-court statements, and so may safely be admitted. The psychology lying behind this notion may be suspect, but that, historically, is the rationale for this cluster of exceptions.20 Having said that, it might be better to forget the rationale altogether and regard the four exceptions which are described under this head as standing independently. The reason for this is that it is often assumed that the ‘excited utterance’ conditions (see below) have somehow got to apply to the other three situations as well. This is not so.
