DE · rules
D.R.E. 615
Excluding Witnesses
At a party’s request, the court may order witnesses excluded so that they
cannot hear other witnesses’ testimony. Or the court may do so on its own.
But this rule does not authorize excluding:
(a) a party who is a natural person;
(b) an officer or employee of a party that is not a natural person, after being
designated as the party’s representative by its attorney or;
(c) a person whose presence a party shows to be essential to presenting the
party’s claim or defense.
History
Comment This rule tracks F.R.E. 615 except that “may” was substituted for “must” in the first line. It was believed that the court should be given latitude as to whether witnesses should be sequestered. It was recognized that in most cases a request for sequestration will be granted but that it is sometimes desirable not to sequester a particular witness, especially an expert witness. F.R.E. 615(d) has not been included in D.R.E. 615. For prior cases illustrating the areas of law covered by this rule, see Fountain v. State, Del. Supr., 382 A.2d 230 (1977); Derrickson v. State, Del. Supr., 321 A.2d 497 (1974). D.R.E. 615 was amended in 2017 in response to the 2011 restyling of the Federal Rules of Evidence. The amendment is intended to be stylistic only. The pre-2017 “Comment” to D.R.E. 615 was revised only as necessary to reflect the current language of F.R.E. 615. There is no intent to change any result in ruling on evidence admissibility.
Provenance
- Source
- courts.delaware.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-09-23
- Edition
- 2026-09-23
- Content hash
8acc9352e2fff05d65bb3f6161a7faeb7d10e65502a72d115774a4859fec2262
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.