Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-899_97be.pdf
Page Number: 6.0

Cite as:  602 U. S. ____ (2024) 

3 

Opinion of the Court 

limits.  Davis  v.  Washington,  547  U. S.  813,  823  (2006).
First,  in  speaking  about  “witnesses”—or  “those  who  bear 
testimony”—the Clause confines itself to “testimonial state-
ments,”  a  category  whose  contours  we  have  variously  de-
scribed.  Id., at 823, 826; see id., at 822 (statements “made 
in the course of police interrogation” were testimonial when 
“the primary purpose of the interrogation [was] to establish
or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal 
prosecution”); Michigan v. Bryant, 562 U. S. 344, 358, 359 
(2011)  (statements  made  to  police  “to  meet  an  ongoing
emergency” were “not procured with a primary purpose of 
creating  an  out-of-court  substitute  for  trial  testimony”); 
Melendez-Diaz, 557 U. S., at 311 (testimonial certificates of 
the results of forensic analysis were created “under circum-
stances which would lead an objective witness reasonably
to believe that the statement[s] would be available for use
at  a  later  trial”);  infra,  at  19.    Second  and  more  relevant 
here,  the  Clause  bars  only  the  introduction  of  hearsay—
meaning,  out-of-court  statements  offered  “to  prove  the
truth of the matter asserted.”  Anderson v. United States, 
417 U. S. 211, 219 (1974).  When a statement is admitted 
for  a  reason  unrelated  to  its  truth,  we  have  held,  the 
Clause’s “role in protecting the right of cross-examination” 
is  not  implicated.    Tennessee  v.  Street,  471  U. S.  409,  414 
(1985); see Anderson, 417 U. S., at 220.  That is because the 
need to test an absent witness ebbs when her truthfulness 
is not at issue.  See ibid.; Street, 471 U. S., at 414; infra, at 
13–14, 17. 

Not long after Crawford, the Court made clear that the 
Confrontation Clause applies to forensic reports.  In Melendez-
Diaz v. Massachusetts, state prosecutors introduced “certif-
icates of analysis” (essentially, affidavits) stating that lab 
tests had identified a substance seized from the defendant 
as cocaine.  557 U. S., at 308.  But the State did not call as 
witnesses  the  analysts  who  had  conducted  the  tests  and