Opinion ID: 2206409
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Suggested Requirement of Police Involvement

Text: The Court has not yet had occasion to apply the confrontation clause to statements other than those made in response to police interrogation. Indeed, the Court left open the questions not only when but  whether  statements made to persons other than law enforcement personnel are testimonial. (Emphasis added.) Davis, 547 U.S. at ___ n. 2, 126 S.Ct. at 2274 n. 2, 165 L.Ed.2d at 238 n. 2. Stepping into the breach, the State argues that only statements made to law enforcement personnel can be testimonial. In support of its government-involvement requirement, the State points to Crawford 's focus on the historical background of the confrontation clause in determining the clause's original meaning. Based on this historical review, Crawford arrived at a narrow list of four modern practices with closest kinship to the abuses at which the Confrontation Clause was directed. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. at 1374, 158 L.Ed.2d at 203. These practices included: prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, before a grand jury, or at a former trial; and    police interrogations. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. at 1374, 158 L.Ed.2d at 203. The State argues that a statement is testimonial only if it is produced by virtue of one of these `modern practices,' each of which features government involvement in the production of a testimonial statement. In the State's view, statements made to nongovernment officials simply cannot constitute `testimonial' statements under the Crawford paradigm. We disagree. In listing the modern practices to which the State refers, Crawford stated: We leave for another day any effort to spell out a comprehensive definition of `testimonial.' Whatever else the term covers, 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. These are the modern practices with closest kinship to the abuses at which the Confrontation Clause was directed. (Emphasis added.) Crawford, 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. at 1374, 158 L.Ed.2d at 203. This passage clearly states that the term testimonial applies, at a minimum, to these modern practices. By prefacing this assertion with the phrase, Whatever else the term covers, the Court implies that testimonial could include statements generated in ways other than these modern practices. The State's assertion that a testimonial statement must have been produced by virtue of one of these practices finds no support in this passage in Crawford. Moreover, while there is language in Crawford emphasizing the role of government officers in creating testimony, Crawford imposes no per se rule that a testimonial statement must be made to a government agent. R. Friedman, Grappling With the Meaning of Testimonial, 71 Brook. L.Rev. 241, 262 (2005). Nor does Davis, which specifically cautioned that the Court's opinion ought not to be read as implying that statements in the absence of police interrogation are necessarily nontestimonial. Davis, 547 U.S. at ___ n. 1, 126 S.Ct. at 2274 n. 1, 165 L.Ed.2d at 237 n. 1. Indeed, the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh suggests the opposite conclusion. As previously noted, part of the evidence against Raleigh was a letter by Lord Cobham, which was plainly not the result of sustained questioning. (Emphasis omitted.) Davis, 547 U.S. at ___ n. 1, 126 S.Ct. at 2274 n. 1, 165 L.Ed.2d at 237 n. 1. Nevertheless, Crawford cited the Raleigh trial as a notorious example of the civil law abuses against which the confrontation clause was directed ( Crawford, 541 U.S. at 44, 124 S.Ct. at 1360, 158 L.Ed.2d at 188), abuses characterized by the admission of testimonial out-of-court statements as evidence against the accused, without benefit of cross-examination. There is an additional objection to the State's requirement of government involvement. The State's argument relies heavily on the premise that there is a strong historical basis for such a requirement. But learned historians have described the theory that there must be government involvement as profoundly ahistorical. R. Friedman & B. McCormack, Dial-In Testimony, 150 U. Pa. L.Rev. 1171, 1248 (2002). In England, state prosecutors did not become the norm for ordinary crime until the nineteenth century. Friedman, 71 Brook. L.Rev. at 261. Prior to that time, most prosecutions were private lawsuits. 150 U. Pa. L.Rev. at 1248. Until the state assumed the management of crime in the nineteenth century and professional police forces took over the pursuit and apprehension of suspects, the gathering of evidence, and the preparation of cases    these matters were left largely to the private initiative of the victim. J.M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England 1660-1800 35 (1986). And the right to confront was established long before [the nineteenth century]; indeed, in the sixteenth century Thomas Smith described the criminal trial as an `altercation' between accuser and accused. Friedman, 71 Brook. L.Rev. at 261. Thus the State's main argument in support of its requirement of government involvementthat this requirement was rooted in historical practice that predated the adoption of the sixth amendmenthas little basis in legal history. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the State points to decisions where, according to the State, the courts concluded that statements made to nongovernment officials simply cannot constitute `testimonial' statements under the Crawford paradigm. Many of these decisions deal only cursorily with the issue of whether a testimonial statement requires government involvement. These decisions contain little, if any, analysis regarding this question, and we find them unpersuasive. A decision cited by the State that does contain some analysis of this issue is United States v. Savoca, 335 F.Supp.2d 385 (S.D.N.Y.2004). There, a defendant sought to exclude statements given by his codefendant to his live-in girlfriend. The court concluded that the statements were not testimonial and therefore were not barred under Crawford. The court cited several reasons for this conclusion, one of which was that the statements were not made to a government official. According to the court, Crawford was meant to apply only to testimonial statements that were made in the context of some governmental action. Savoca, 335 F.Supp.2d at 392. The court based this conclusion on the premise that all of the examples of testimonial statements listed in Crawford were made to an authority figure in an authoritarian environment. Savoca, 335 F.Supp.2d at 393. We disagree with Savoca 's premise and reasoning. First, even if the premise were correct, and all of the examples did share the trait the court observed, they were merely examplesthe Court never stated any governmental involvement requirement and indeed, in Davis, made clear that it had not done so. See Davis, 547 U.S. at ___ n. 2, 126 S.Ct. at 2274 n. 2, 165 L.Ed.2d at 238 n. 2 (our holding today makes it unnecessary to consider whether and when statements made to someone other than law enforcement personnel are `testimonial'). Moreover, we disagree with Savoca's premise that all of the examples are statements made to an authority figure in an authoritarian environment ( Savoca, 335 F.Supp.2d at 393), because one of the examples was a simple affidavit. Surely, although some notaries public might be authority figures they certainly are not all, nor do they all work in environments which can fairly be described as authoritarian. The universal rule Savoca sought to infer simply is not there. The Court has not as yet given any indication that testimonial statements must be made to a government officer, and our own review of the authorities and the historical backgroundspecifically Raleigh's caseleads us to the conclusion that statements can be testimonial even if not made directly to agents of the state.