Cite as: 512 U. S. 594 (1994)
Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment
804(b)(3) by itself provides little guidance and would accommodate comfortably either a doctrine excluding or one admitting collateral statements"). The Court resolves the issue, as I understand its opinion, by adopting the extreme position that no collateral statements are admissible under Rule 804(b)(3). See ante, at 599 (adopting "narrower reading" that "Rule 804(b)(3) cover[s] only those declarations or remarks within the confession that are individually self-inculpatory"); ante, at 607 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); but cf. ante, p. 605 (Scalia, J., concurring). The Court reaches that conclusion by relying on the "principle behind the Rule" that reasonable people do not make statements against their interest unless they are telling the truth, ante, at 599, and reasons that this policy "expressed in the Rule's text," ante, at 602, "simply does not extend" to collateral statements, ante, at 599. Though conceding that Congress can "make statements admissible based on their proximity to self-inculpatory statements," the Court says that it cannot "lightly assume that the ambiguous language means anything so inconsistent with the Rule's underlying theory." Ante, at 600.
With respect, I must disagree with this analysis. All agree that the justification for admission of hearsay statements against interest was, as it still is, that reasonable people do not make those statements unless believing them to be true, but that has not resolved the long-running debate over the admissibility of collateral statements, as to which there is no clear consensus in the authorities. Indeed, to the extent the authorities come close to any consensus, they support admission of some collateral statements. See supra, at 611-612. Given that the underlying principle for the hearsay exception has not resolved the debate over collateral statements one way or the other, I submit that we should not assume that the text of Rule 804(b)(3), which is silent about collateral statements, in fact incorporates one of the competing positions. The Rule's silence no more incor-
613
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