Crawford v. Washington
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Crawford v. Washington | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||||||||||||
| Argued November 10, 2003 Decided March 8, 2004 |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
| Holding | ||||||||||||||
| The use at trial of out of court statements made to police by an unavailable witness violated a criminal defendant's Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses against him. Washington Supreme Court reversed and remanded. | ||||||||||||||
| Court membership | ||||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: William Rehnquist Associate Justices: John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer |
||||||||||||||
| Case opinions | ||||||||||||||
| Majority by: Scalia Joined by: Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer Concurrence by: Rehnquist Joined by: O'Connor |
||||||||||||||
| Laws applied | ||||||||||||||
| U.S. Const. amend. VI | ||||||||||||||
Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), is a United States Supreme Court decision that reformulated the standard for determining when the admission of hearsay statements in criminal cases is permitted under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The court unanimously reversed Michael Crawford's conviction for assault and attempted murder.
Contents |
[edit] Factual background
Michael Crawford and his wife Sylvia Crawford confronted the victim, Kenneth Lee, over an allegation that Lee had attempted to sexually assault Crawford's wife, whereupon Michael Crawford subsequently stabbed Lee. Michael Crawford claimed he had acted in self-defense when he believed Lee had picked up a weapon. Lee denied doing anything that might make Crawford believe he was trying to attack him.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Crawford were questioned by police after receiving a Miranda warning. Mr. Crawford said to the police that he was not sure if Mr. Lee had a weapon, but that Crawford believed at the time that Lee did. Mrs. Crawford, being interrogated separately, at first said that she had not seen the attack, but under further questioning said that she had seen the attack and that Lee was not holding a weapon.
[edit] Trial proceeding
At trial, Mrs. Crawford could not be compelled to testify by the state, since under Washington's spousal privilege law, a spouse cannot testify in court without the defendant spouse's consent (except when a spouse is a complainant).
The deputy prosecutor, Robert Lund, sought to introduce Mrs. Crawford's statement to the police as evidence that Mr. Crawford had no reasonable belief that he was in danger from Mr. Lee. Although, generally, out-of-court statements by persons other than the accused are excluded as hearsay, the court allowed the statement to be admitted on the basis that the statement was reliable, as it was partially corroborated by Mr. Crawford's statement to police.
Defense counsel objected to the admission of the wife's statement, on the ground that Mr. Crawford would be unable to confront (i.e. cross-examine) Mrs. Crawford on her statement without waiving spousal privilege, and that this would be a violation of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment.
The statement was allowed into evidence at the trial, and the prosecution relied on it heavily in its closing statement.
[edit] Procedural history
Michael Crawford was convicted.
The Washington Court of Appeals overturned the decision of the trial court. After applying a nine-factor test to determine whether Sylvia’s statement was reliable, and therefore admissible under the doctrine of Ohio v. Roberts, the court determined it was not, and gave several reasons why.
However, the Washington Supreme Court reinstated the conviction, because the Court felt that the statement was reliable. In particular, the court noted that Michael and Sylvia Crawford's statements interlocked, and therefore concluded that Sylvia’s statements were admissible.
The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari (i.e., agreed to hear the case).
[edit] Discussion
The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment (applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment) provides: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right… to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” This right has very specific purposes. The focus of the Clause is on getting the truth out of a witness, and allowing a trier of fact to determine whether the witness indeed told the truth. Even given these important goals, this right is not absolute.
Admission of out of court statements, therefore, is and has been possible. For over 20 years prior to Crawford, the controlling standard for admitting statements that unavailable witnesses made to other persons was that of Ohio v. Roberts. According to the Roberts Court, if a witness is unavailable, that witnesses’ testimony can be admitted through a third person if it bears “adequate indicia of reliability” falling within a “firmly rooted hearsay exception” or has “particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.”
When Michael Crawford was accused of stabbing Kenneth Lee on August 5, 1999, the Roberts standard was still controlling law. Crawford and his wife, Sylvia, were questioned separately by police regarding a stabbing incident that had taken place at Lee’s home. The statements of the two were generally corroborating, but while Michael had claimed self-defense, Sylvia implied that Michael was not protecting himself when he stabbed Lee. At trial, the state moved to admit Sylvia’s statement under Roberts. The trial court admitted the evidence, “noting several reasons why it was trustworthy….”
[edit] The U.S. Supreme Court decision and rationale
The United States Supreme Court held that the use of the spouse's recorded statement made during police interrogation violated the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to be confronted with the witnesses against the defendant where the spouse, because of the state law marital privilege, did not testify at the trial.
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, expressed concern over the inconsistent results reached by courts under Ohio v. Roberts, the standard used by the Washington state courts. He thought the results of the Crawford decisions at the various levels of Washington state courts exemplary of this problem. Justice Scalia gave a thorough history of the Confrontation Clause, explaining how the Clause became part of the Constitution using famous English cases such as that of Sir Walter Raleigh. He then described the context in which the Constitutional Framers drafted the clause, and displayed how early American courts interpreted the clause.
This history, Scalia concluded, clearly shows that the Confrontation Clause was directed at keeping “ex parte” examinations out of the evidentiary record. Specifically, the Confrontation Clause applies to “witnesses” against the accused, “those who ‘bear testimony.’” Relying on this and the historical record, Scalia stated, “the Framers would not have allowed admission of testimonial statements of a witness who did not appear at trial unless he was unavailable to testify, and the defendant had had a prior opportunity for cross-examination.” Scalia determined that a prior opportunity for cross-examination was mandatory, and dispositive of whether or not testimonial statements of an unavailable witness are admissible. "Dispensing with confrontation because testimony is obviously reliable is akin to dispensing with jury trial because a defendant is obviously guilty."
The Crawford Court determined that where non-testimonial statements are involved, the Confrontation Clause allows a court to use its discretion to determine the reliability of the statements. “Where testimonial evidence is at issue, however, the Sixth Amendment demands what the common law required: unavailability and a prior opportunity for cross-examination…. [T]he only indicium of reliability sufficient to satisfy constitutional demands is the one the Constitution actually prescribes: confrontation.”
[edit] Concurrence
Chief Justice William Rehnquist concurred in the result, but would have decided the case on narrower grounds, within the older Roberts framework. He would not have expanded the right of defendants to exclude out-of-court statements on the basis that they could not confront the witness.
[edit] Effect of the decision
This decision had an immediate, profound effect upon the ability of prosecutors to prove their cases through the use of evidence which had previously been admissible via various exceptions to the hearsay rule. Justice Scalia's opinion explicitly states that any out-of-court statement that is "testimonial" in nature is not admissible, unless the declarant is unavailable to testify in court, and the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine him or her. However, the opinion does not define "testimonial," which has allowed courts across the country to determine that issue for themselves.
One of the main areas in which lower courts have been trying to resolve this issue involves the use of 911 calls during the course of trial where the caller is not available to testify (see Davis v. Washington). Other cases have dealt with the issue of the previously common practice of admitting certain types of certified documents under the business records or public records exception to the hearsay rule. Two areas of law where prosecutors have particularly suffered are child and spousal abuse cases, in which victims often recant, thereby making themselves unavailable.
