An out-of-court statement offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement. Generally inadmissible in court because the original speaker cannot be cross-examined, though many exceptions exist.
From Middle English, literally meaning 'hear say' - what one person heard another person say. The compound reflects the secondhand nature of such evidence, emphasizing that it's not direct testimony but rather testimony about what someone else said.
Hearsay is like the legal version of the telephone game - by the time a statement gets repeated in court, it might be completely different from what was originally said! The law generally doesn't trust secondhand information because there's no way to cross-examine the ghost of the original speaker.
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