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10 

HEMPHILL v. NEW YORK 

Opinion of the Court 

the Reid rule limits only the manner of asserting the con-
frontation right, not its substantive scope.

It is true that the Sixth Amendment leaves States with 
flexibility  to  adopt  reasonable  procedural  rules  governing 
the exercise of a defendant’s right to confrontation.  For ex-
ample, “States are free to adopt procedural rules governing
objections,”  including  contemporaneous  objection  require-
ments and, in the context of forensic evidence, “notice-and-
demand  statutes.”  Melendez-Diaz  v.  Massachusetts,  557 
U. S. 305, 327 (2009).  In addition, the Confrontation Clause 
will not bar a defendant’s removal from a courtroom if, de-
spite repeated warnings, he “insists on conducting himself
in a manner so disorderly, disruptive, and disrespectful of 
the court that his trial cannot be carried on with him in the 
courtroom.”  Illinois v. Allen, 397 U. S. 337, 343 (1970).

incorporated 

The  door-opening  principle 

in  Reid, 
however, is not a member of this class of procedural rules.
Rather,  it  is  a  substantive  principle  of  evidence  that  dic-
tates  what  material  is  relevant  and  admissible  in  a  case. 
See Massie, 2 N. Y. 3d, at 182–184, 809 N. E. 2d, at 1104– 
1105 (citing People v. Melendez, 55 N. Y. 2d 445, 434 N. E. 
2d  1324  (1982),  a  case  about  the  admissibility  of  hearsay 
testimony, as “[t]he leading case in this Court on ‘opening
the door’ ”); New York State Unified Court System, Guide to
New York Evidence Rule 4.08 (2021) (explaining the “open 
the door” principle as a rule of evidence).  As this case illus-
trates,  the  principle  requires  a  trial  court  to  determine 
whether one party’s evidence and arguments, in the context
of  the  full  record,  have  created  a  “misleading impression” 
that requires correction with additional material from the 
other side. 

Moreover, the State’s argument would negate Crawford’s 
emphatic rejection of the reliability-based approach of Ohio 
v. Roberts.  If Crawford stands for anything, it is that the 
history, text, and purpose of the Confrontation Clause bar