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Page Number: 17.0

14 

SMITH v. ARIZONA 

Opinion of the Court 

otherwise said, the point was to show, by highlighting the 
two confessions’ differences, that Street’s was not a “coerced 
imitation.”  Id., at 414.  For that purpose, the truth of the
accomplice’s  confession  (and  the  credibility  of  the  accom-
plice himself ) was irrelevant. 

But truth is everything when it comes to the kind of basis 
testimony presented here.  If an expert for the prosecution 
conveys an out-of-court statement in support of his opinion,
and the statement supports that opinion only if true, then 
the statement has been offered for the truth of what it as-
serts.  How could it be otherwise?  “The whole point” of the 
prosecutor’s eliciting such a statement is “to establish—be-
cause of the [statement’s] truth—a basis for the jury to credit 
the  testifying  expert’s”  opinion.    Stuart,  586  U. S.,  at  ___ 
(GORSUCH, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., 
at 3) (emphasis in original).  Or said a bit differently, the
truth of the basis testimony is what makes it useful to the 
prosecutor;  that  is  what  supplies  the  predicate  for—and 
thus gives value to—the state expert’s opinion.  So “[t]here
is no meaningful distinction between disclosing an out-of-
court statement” to “explain the basis of an expert’s opin-
ion” and “disclosing that statement for its truth.”  Williams, 
567 U. S., at 106 (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment).  A 
State may use only the former label, but in all respects the 
two purposes merge.

Or to see the point another way, consider it from the fact-
finder’s perspective.  In the view of the Arizona courts, an 
expert’s conveyance of another analyst’s report enables the 
factfinder  to  “determine  whether  [the  expert’s]  opinion
should  be  found  credible.”    Karp,  236  Ariz.,  at  124,  336 
P. 3d, at 757; see Williams, 238 Ill. 2d, at 144, 939 N. E. 2d, 
at  278  (also  stating  that  such  a  report  “aid[s]  the  jury  in
assessing the value of [the expert’s] opinion”); supra, at 6, 
10.  That is no doubt right.  The jury cannot decide whether 
the expert’s opinion is credible without evaluating the truth
of the factual assertions on which it is based.  See D. Kaye,