Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-899_97be.pdf
Page Number: 5

2 

SMITH v. ARIZONA 

Opinion of the Court 

reject that view.  When an expert conveys an absent ana-
lyst’s  statements  in  support  of  his  opinion, and  the  state-
ments  provide  that  support  only  if  true,  then  the  state-
ments come into evidence for their truth.  As this dispute 
illustrates, that will generally be the case when an expert 
relays an absent lab analyst’s statements as part of offering 
his opinion.  And if those statements are testimonial too— 
an  issue  we  briefly  address  but  do  not  resolve  as  to  this
case—the Confrontation Clause will bar their admission. 

I 
A 
The Confrontation Clause provides that “[i]n all criminal 
prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be con-
fronted with the witnesses against him.”  In operation, the 
Clause protects a defendant’s right of cross-examination by 
limiting  the  prosecution’s  ability  to  introduce  statements
made by people not in the courtroom.  For a time, this Court 
held that the Clause’s “preference for face-to-face” confron-
tation could give way if a court found that an out-of-court
statement  bore  “adequate  indicia  of  reliability.”    Ohio  v. 
Roberts, 448 U. S. 56, 65–66 (1980).  But two decades ago,
the Court changed course, to better reflect original under-
standings.  In Crawford v. Washington, the Court deemed 
it “fundamentally at odds with the right of confrontation”
to admit statements based on judicial determinations of re-
liability.  541 U. S., at 61.  The Clause, Crawford explained,
“commands[ ] not that evidence be reliable, but that relia-
bility be assessed in a particular manner: by testing in the
crucible  of  cross-examination.”    Ibid.    And  so  the  Clause 
bars  the  admission  at  trial  of  an  absent  witness’s  state-
ments—however trustworthy a judge might think them—
unless the witness is unavailable and the defendant had a 
prior chance to subject her to cross-examination.

But not always.  The Clause’s prohibition “applies only to
testimonial hearsay”—and in that two-word phrase are two