Opinion ID: 792559
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: standard of review

Text: 63 Johnson challenges the admission of statements made by Stone and recorded surreptitiously by Hardin at the behest of the government. The parties dispute the standard of review applicable to this issue. Johnson argues that we should review the matter de novo, while the government contends that reversal is proper only if the district court abused its discretion. 64 We will review Johnson's Confrontation Clause challenge de novo. In United States v. Pugh, 405 F.3d 390 (6th Cir.2005), this court was presented with a claim analogous to Johnson's. Pugh was convicted in 2002 of conspiracy to commit bank robbery and of aiding and abetting a bank robbery. Id. at 394-96. He presented a Confrontation Clause challenge to the admission of hearsay statements against him. Id. at 397. In analyzing the issue, the court noted that the typical standard of review for evidentiary rulings is abuse of discretion. Id. The court then went on to recite the traditional rule from Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), that any out-of-court testimonial statement made by an unavailable declarant could be admitted provided that the judge found that it bore adequate indicia of reliability. Id. at 398. 65 But that was neither the standard of review nor the substantive rule that the Pugh court applied. The court noted that since Pugh's conviction, the Supreme Court had decided Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), which changed the Confrontation Clause analysis. Pugh, 405 F.3d at 398. This new analysis was applied in Pugh's case, even though he was convicted before Crawford was decided and despite the normal abuse-of-discretion standard of review. Id. at 399 & n. 7 (citing Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 322-23, 107 S.Ct. 708, 93 L.Ed.2d 649 (1987) ([A]fter we have decided a new rule in the case selected, the integrity of judicial review requires that we apply that rule to all similar cases pending on direct review.)). In accordance with Pugh, we review Johnson's claim under Crawford pursuant to the de novo standard because Johnson's appeal was pending when Crawford was decided. 66