The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution includes fundamental procedural protections for criminal defendants, among them the guarantee that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him." Along with the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and other protections, it comprises the constitutional foundation for fair trials. Complex and oft times technical requirements for conducting a trial—civil or criminal—are further embodied in numerous laws governing trial procedure. The federal courts operate in conformance with the federal rules of civil or criminal procedure, and the federal rules of evidence. State courts have comparable procedural strictures. Simply put, the Confrontation Clause ensures that a defendant has the right to challenge, generally through cross-examination, the testimony of his accusers. The judge and jury's ability to assess the demeanor and credibility of a witness is an essential element of a criminal defense. In practice, however, evidence—both incriminating and exculpatory—is not delivered solely through the testimony of live witnesses at trial. In addition to witness testimony, rules of evidence govern the admissibility at trial of innumerable out-of-court statements, documents, records, and objects. Not all evidence is deemed admissible. Among the more well-known categories of common but inadmissible evidence is "hearsay." Hearsay evidence is defined as: [A] statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted. Hence, a prior out-of-court statement made by someone other than the witness actually testifying, that is, the declarant, which is offered in evidence to prove the matter asserted therein is generally inadmissible. There are, however, many exceptions to the hearsay rule embodied in the Federal Rules of Evidence and those of the states as well. The exceptions, like the rule itself, derive from the common law and have historically been judged as being sufficiently trustworthy to permit their admission into evidence. One well-known exception to the hearsay rule is a "dying declaration." For example, shortly before dying, a homicide victim might tell someone who shot him. The now-deceased victim clearly cannot stand for direct or cross-examination. Accordingly, if the person who heard the statement testifies at trial about the victim's identification of the killer, it would be deemed hearsay. But it can be judged admissible if it comports with the "dying declaration" exception to the hearsay rule. Historically, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Confrontation Clause as being more or less compatible with evidentiary rules governing out-of-court statements. In 1979, in Ohio v. Roberts , the Court expressed the view that evidence that fit within a hearsay exception or had analogous "particularized guarantees of trustworthiness" would also "comport with the substance" of the Confrontation Clause; hearsay rules and the Confrontation Clause were generally designed to protect similar values and stemmed from the same roots. However, in a landmark 2004 decision, Crawford v. Washington, the Court overruled Roberts. The Crawford decision introduced a new standard for Confrontation Clause analysis: testimonial versus nontestimonial statements. In the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010-2011 term, two cases were handed down which are significant post- Crawford interpretations of the Clause. One case, Michigan v. Bryant , held that admitting into evidence a dying man's statements to police officers about his assailant did not violate the Confrontation Clause—not through the "dying declaration" exception, but because they were made to assist law enforcement officers in an "ongoing emergency" and were therefore "nontestimonial." The other, Bullcoming v. New Mexico , addressed the prosecution's use of forensic laboratory reports. It concluded that the Confrontation Clause requires the laboratory analyst who performed the test to appear at trial and confront the defendant in person. This report examines these decisions in the context of the Court's relatively new Confrontation Clause jurisprudence. It considers their implications for admissibility of evidence in criminal prosecutions. Defendant Crawford was tried and convicted in a Washington State court for stabbing a man who allegedly tried to rape his wife. During police questioning, the wife stated that the victim was unarmed at the time of the attack. That statement was recorded by the interrogating police officer. The defendant, charged with assault and attempted murder, alleged that he had acted in self-defense. Because the defendant's wife invoked her marital privilege not to testify against her husband, the prosecution introduced the recording of the wife's statement. The defendant's Sixth Amendment objection was overruled. The Washington State Supreme Court upheld the conviction, which the United States Supreme Court reversed and remanded. In an opinion by Justice Scalia, the Court held that playing the wife's tape-recorded statement at the defendant's trial violated his Sixth Amendment right to be confronted by the witnesses against him. Because the defendant's wife did not take the witness stand, her recorded statement was inadmissible. After an exhaustive survey of the right of confrontation from Roman times through the 17 th -century English common law and continental civil law, the Court concluded that the Framers of the Constitution intended that, where out-of-court testimonial evidence is at issue, the Sixth Amendment demands, at a minimum, that a witness be both unavailable at trial and that the defendant had a prior opportunity for cross-examination. Therefore, the state's admission of the wife's prior testimonial statement against the accused, where the defendant had no opportunity to cross-examine her, constituted a violation of the Sixth Amendment. The Court devoted considerable discussion to the 1603 trial of Sir Walter Raleigh for treason, where accusations made by Lord Cobham before the Privy Council and in a letter were read to the jury hearing Raleigh's case. Raleigh was denied the right to question Cobham. Raleigh was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death. The widely perceived injustice of Sir Walter Raleigh's case led to a series of statutory and judicial reforms regarding a right to confrontation under English law. Many of these were adopted into late 18 th -century and early 19 th -century American jurisprudence. The Court concluded that the Framers viewed "testimonial" evidence as including solemn declarations made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact in a context that the declarant would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially. The Court gave examples of "testimonial" statements, including " ex parte in-court testimony or its functional equivalent—that is, material such as affidavits, custodial examinations, prior testimony that the defendant was unable to cross-examine, or similar pretrial statements that declarants would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially." Testimonial statements include those taken by police officers in the course of interrogations, because, in the Court's view "[p]olice interrogations bear a striking resemblance to examination by justices of the peace in England." Therefore, the Clause "is most naturally read as a reference to the right of confrontation at common law, admitting only those exceptions established at the time of the founding." Since the common law in 1791 conditioned admissibility of an absent witness's examination on unavailability and a prior opportunity to cross-examine, the Sixth Amendment incorporates those limitations. Any contrary common law exceptions to rules of exclusion for hearsay evidence did not apply to testimonial statements against the accused in a criminal case. Despite the historical antecedents for the Court's understanding of testimonial evidence and the Confrontation Clause, it nevertheless had to address the rationale of Ohio v. Roberts , which held that the confrontation right did not bar admission of an unavailable witness's statement against a criminal defendant if the statement bears "adequate 'indicia of reliability,'" a test met when the evidence either falls within a "firmly rooted hearsay exception" or bears "particularized guarantees of trustworthiness." The Court found that the balancing test employed by the courts to determine whether hearsay evidence satisfied "indicia of reliability" did not conform with the intent of the Framers with respect to the Confrontation Clause. It overruled the Roberts standard, replacing it with the standard that "testimonial" evidence may not be admitted absent a right of cross examination: Where testimonial statements are involved, we do not think the Framers meant to leave the Sixth Amendment's protection to the vagaries of the rules of evidence, much less to amorphous notions of "reliability." Certainly none of the authorities discussed above acknowledges any general reliability exception to the common-law rule. Admitting statements deemed reliable by a judge is fundamentally at odds with the right of confrontation. To be sure, the Clause's ultimate goal is to ensure reliability of evidence, but it is a procedural rather than a substantive guarantee. It commands, not that evidence be reliable, but that reliability be assessed in a particular manner: by testing in the crucible of cross-examination . The Court declined to spell out a comprehensive definition of "testimonial" evidence, leaving it for another day. It applies, at a minimum, to prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, before a grand jury, or at a former trial, and to police interrogations. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote a concurring opinion, which Justice O'Connor joined, agreeing with the decision to overturn the Washington Supreme Court's holding, but taking issue with the majority's decision to overrule Roberts . The majority's distinction between testimonial and nontestimonial statements "contrary to its claim, is no better rooted in history than our current doctrine [under Ohio v. Roberts ]." Chief Justice Rehnquist's interpretation of historical precedent and English common law indicated a more flexible and evolving jurisprudence related to the admissibility of evidence, in general, and the treatment of "testimonial" evidence in particular: It is one thing to trace the right of confrontation back to the Roman Empire; it is quite another to conclude that such a right absolutely excludes a large category of evidence.