Rule 11-802 The rule against hearsay.

Hearsay is when someone tries to testify about a statement made outside of court to prove that the statement is true. For example, if a witness says "Sarah told me she saw the car crash," and that statement is being used to prove the crash happened the way Sarah described it, that's hearsay.

The basic idea behind this rule is that courts want to hear from people directly, not secondhand accounts of what someone else said. When a witness testifies about what another person said outside of court, there's no way to question that other person, check their memory, or see if they were being honest. So courts generally don't allow this kind of evidence.

That said, this rule isn't absolute. There are many exceptions built into other rules, and sometimes a law or court order allows hearsay to come in anyway. So while hearsay is blocked by default, it's not automatically barred in every case. Whether a specific statement counts as hearsay, and whether an exception applies, often depends on the details of the situation.