Posted on 03/08/2004 12:28:04 PM PST by george wythe
The Constitution guarantees a criminal defendant may confront his accusers, and that right means prosecutors can't use a wife's taped statement to police to try to undermine her husband at trial, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The high court sided with a man convicted of assaulting an acquaintance he had accused of trying to rape his wife. Sylvia Crawford did not testify at Michael Crawford's trial, but prosecutors played a tape they claimed showed her story did not match his.
Michael Crawford's lawyers had no opportunity to cross-examine Sylvia Crawford about the tape, a unanimous Supreme Court said.
"That alone is sufficient to make out a violation of the Sixth Amendment," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees that "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him."
All nine justices agreed to throw out Michael Crawford's conviction and return the case to the state court system in Washington. Seven justices also took the unusual step of squarely overruling an earlier case that laid out complex rules for when statements can be used without the opportunity for cross-examination.
The 1980 case has needlessly complicated a fairly straightforward part of the Constitution, Scalia wrote. The Constitution's framers were wary of letting judges have too much power, he added.
"By replacing categorical constitutional guarantees with open-ended balancing tests, we do violence to their design. Vague standards are manipulable," Scalia wrote.
While that "might be a small concern in run-of-the-mill assault prosecutions like this one," the framers had in mind the darker specter of state trials such as Sir Walter Raleigh's in 17th Century England, Scalia wrote.
Raleigh demanded that the judges "call my accuser before my face," but they refused. Raleigh was sentenced to death for treason.
Justices John Paul Stevens, Anthony M. Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer agreed with him.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor dissented from the portion of the ruling that overturned the earlier case, and said the majority was complicating, not clarifying, the rules prosecutors should follow.
"The thousands of federal prosecutors and the tens of thousands of state prosecutors need answers as to what beyond the specific kinds of 'testimony' the court lists is covered by the new rule," Rehnquist wrote.
The Crawford case began in 1999, when Crawford and his wife went to find Kenneth Lee at his apartment in Olympia, Wash. The two men argued and fought, and Sylvia Crawford saw what happened. Michael Crawford got a cut on his hand that required 12 stitches to close, and he stabbed Lee in the stomach, seriously wounding him.
The Crawfords fled the apartment and were arrested that night. They both gave statements to police, but only Michael Crawford said he thought he had seen Lee reach for a weapon before he was stabbed.
Sylvia did not testify at her husband's trial because of the law protecting spouses from testifying against one another. Prosecutors used her statement to refute his claim that the stabbing was self-defense. In a closing statement to jurors, a prosecutor called the statement "damning evidence."
The case is Crawford v. Washington, 02-9410.
All nine justices agreed to throw out Michael Crawford's conviction and return the case to the state court system in Washington. Seven justices also took the unusual step of squarely overruling an earlier case that laid out complex rules for when statements can be used without the opportunity for cross-examination.Good news; every Justice agrees that prosecutors overreached on this case, and the trial judge disregarded the US Constitution.
Kobe Bryant's lawyers will be citing this one for sure. Rape shield laws may be well-intentioned, but they are IMO a clear violation of the 6th as well.
"By replacing categorical constitutional guarantees with open-ended balancing tests, we do violence to their design. Vague standards are manipulable," Scalia wrote.
We have lots of "balancing tests" for at least the 1st, 2nd and 4th Amendments. Why suddenly unequivocally uphold the 6th?
My layman's observation is that the standard in traffic citations is different from criminal charges. In other words, in traffic court defendants are guilty until proven innocent.
Traffic lawyers usually use experts to challenge the accuracy of red-light cameras, so it becomes a war of experts on cameras.
Those usually have expert witnesses testifying as to their veracity. You can cross examine these witnesses (remember OJ?). Otherwise, you can consider them evidence, and the Constitution doesn't guarantee you the ability to cross-examine evidence.
I was surprised also. It seems that the Justices let the simple language of the US Constitution to stand on its own, and they did not try to find penumbras for a change.
The SCOTUS is rapidly cutting its own throat.
I still take a victory for the US Constitution any day.
Today, the SCOTUS Justices prove they can read the plain language of the US Constitution when they feel like it, so they have no excuse for their convoluted decisions.
I always thought that the language of the US Constitution is so powerful because even a barely literate American can understand it.
This goes on all the time in the courts of the state of Washington. With few exceptions, the WA state SC justices have no regard for the rule of law.
I am a bit surprised that even Justice Sanders sided with the majority as he is normally consistent with the constitution in his decisions.
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