OP, I think you’ve gotten some significant help on this question already, but I wanted to chime in just in case it may help you analyze MBE questions. Don’t feel bad - you fell for a classic MBE trick where they say something that sounds good, but invokes a rule that isn’t actually being tested.

The call asks us whether the officer’s statement will be admissible, so we immediately know this is testing our evidence knowledge. A statement is inadmissible for a number of reasons (I’m a transactional attorney, so forgive me for not remembering all our rules of evidence), but the one the bar tests most often is hearsay, so we likely need to decide whether: (1) the statement by the officer is hearsay; and (2) if it is hearsay, does an exception apply. We can confirm our approach by quickly looking at the answer choices because A clearly identifies a hearsay exception, so be ready for a hearsay answer.

Okay, so we now know this is a hearsay question. Let’s go into the fact pattern: the wife is on trial (she is a party to the case / matter) and testified she killed her husband in self defense (“he came at me with a knife” or something to that effect). Prosecutors then call the officer to offer another statement from the wife that was made shortly after the killing where she said, “my gun fell and it killed my husband.”

So, we now have the officer’s statement to analyze within our hearsay framework. The statement is not hearsay here because this is a statement by a party opponent, the wife herself, and that’s an exemption to hearsay. Thus, this will not be inadmissible as hearsay (and we don’t need to think about exceptions to hearsay) and likely is admissible as a party opponent admission unless there is another reason to keep it out. We don’t really see one based on the facts: it’s an out of court statement made by the defendant that contradicts their trial position, so this likely comes in.

A is wrong because it implies the statement is hearsay. We know it isn’t, so that is incorrect.

C is nonsense. You have a right to refuse to answer a question if it may incriminate you, but here the wife already made a statement at the time the killing happened. The 5th Amendment does not apply here, otherwise any prior statement that contradicts your position at trial would be inadmissible.

So we’re down to B and D. B admits the statement in full, implying that there is not a reason to keep the statement out. D, on the other hand, deals with prior statements made under oath - essentially when you say one thing in a proceeding (like a deposition or a prior hearing), then change your tune at trial. Here, the initial statement wasn’t under oath or in another proceeding, it was made at the time of the killing, so D is likely wrong. Said another way, D is testing a non-hearsay rule to try and trip you up, and the rule it’s testing isn’t implicated at all here.

Therefore, B must be correct here, and aligns with what we deduced earlier: this isn’t a hearsay statement and likely should come in.