Opinion ID: 2033334
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Relationship Between Hearsay and Confrontation Clause.

Text: In reaching the foregoing conclusion, I am aware that jurists and scholars have expressed their unease with the jurisprudence surrounding the relationship between the rule against hearsay and the Confrontation Clause as it relates to the admissibility of out-of-court statements by unavailable declarants that inculpate the defendant. See, e.g., Lilly, supra (Breyer, J., concurring); White v. Illinois, 502 U.S. 346, 112 S.Ct. 736, 116 L.Ed.2d 848 (1992) (Thomas, J., concurring in part, and concurring in judgment; Scalia, J., joins); Akhil Reed Amar, Confrontation Clause First Principles: A Reply to Professor Friedman, 86 Geo. L.J. 1045 (1998); Margaret A. Berger, The Deconstitutionalization of the Confrontation Clause: A Proposal for a Prosecutorial Restraint Model, 76 Minn. L.Rev. 557 (1992); Joshua C. Dickinson, The Confrontation Clause and the Hearsay Rule: The Current State of a Failed Marriage in Need of a Quick Divorce, 33 Creighton L.Rev. 763 (2000); Richard D. Friedman, Confrontation: The Search for Basic Principles, 86 Geo. L.J. 1011 (1998); Benjamin E. Rosenberg, The Future of Codefendant Confessions, 30 Seton Hall L.Rev. 516 (2000); The Supreme Court, 1998 TermLeading Cases: I. Constitutional Law, B. Criminal Law and Procedure, 1. Confrontation Clause Firmly Rooted Hearsay Exceptions, 113 Harv. L.Rev. 233 (1999). Much of the commentary is dedicated to the Roberts doctrine and its subsequent development by the Court. As outlined above, initially under Roberts, it appeared that hearsay which fell under a firmly rooted exception and hearsay which was found to bear particularized guarantees of trustworthiness were functional equivalents for purposes of admissibility. However, case law subsequent to Roberts subjected the nonfirmly rooted hearsay to explicit Confrontation Clause scrutiny by asking whether cross-examination of the declarant of a custodial statement would be of marginal utility and whether adversarial testing would add little, while the firmly rooted hearsay exception remained admissible and free of explicit Confrontation Clause analysis. Observers have commented on this discordance between once equally admissible statements by which, currently, statements admitted under a firmly rooted hearsay exception are not subject to explicit Confrontation Clause review, whereas custodial statements sought to be admitted as bearing particularized guarantees of trustworthiness are nevertheless subject to explicit Confrontation Clause scrutiny. I am aware of the judicial and scholarly discussion regarding the purposes of the Confrontation Clause in general and, in particular, whether the purpose of the Confrontation Clause is to ensure trustworthiness, confrontation, or both. For purposes of this concurrence, I note that Barnett was unavailable. I conclude that the Barnett statement was offered as witness testimony against the defendant for Confrontation Clause purposes, White v. Illinois, 502 U.S. 346, 112 S.Ct. 736, 116 L.Ed.2d 848 (1992) (Thomas, J., concurring in part, and concurring in judgment; Scalia, J., joins), and I understand that the trustworthiness of the statement is the focus of the admissibility analysis of the majority. I further note that the Barnett statement at issue was a custodial statement and that a different analysis might apply to noncustodial statements. As noted above, if a statement fits within a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule, its [r]eliability can be inferred, Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), and it is admitted without further constitutional analysis under the Confrontation Clause. Id. The Court has held that firmly rooted exceptions include the following: excited utterances and statements made for purposes of medical diagnosis and treatment, White v. Illinois, 502 U.S. 346, 112 S.Ct. 736, 116 L.Ed.2d 848 (1992); coconspirators' statements, Bourjaily v. United States, 483 U.S. 171, 107 S.Ct. 2775, 97 L.Ed.2d 144 (1987); and dying declarations, Mattox v. United States, 156 U.S. 237, 15 S.Ct. 337, 39 L.Ed. 409 (1895) (as described in Lilly v. Virginia, 527 U.S. 116, 119 S.Ct. 1887, 144 L.Ed.2d 117 (1999)). As suggested by the concurrence filed by Justice Breyer in Lilly, a criminal defendant would in some cases find cross-examination of the declarant of a firmly rooted hearsay statement which inculpates the defendant of greater than marginal utility, but because of the per se admissibility of the firmly rooted statement, the defendant is not absolutely entitled under the developed Roberts test to confront such a witness against him or her. See, also, The Supreme Court, 1998 Term Leading Cases: I. Constitutional Law, B. Criminal Law and Procedure, 1. Confrontation ClauseFirmly Rooted Hearsay Exceptions, 113 Harv. L.Rev. 233 (1999). But see, Richard D. Friedman, Confrontation: The Search for Basic Principles, 86 Geo. L.J. 1011, 1019 (1998), in which the author states that Lee v. Illinois, 476 U.S. 530, 106 S.Ct. 2056, 90 L.Ed.2d 514 (1986), is particularly interesting because it reflects unwillingness on the part of the majority to accept the full implications of the per se aspects of the Roberts reliability requirement, as well as implicit recognition that, even if a statement by an unavailable declarant fits within a firmly rooted hearsay exception, its admission may violate the confrontation right. Thus, for example, where a coconspirator inculpates the defendant in an out-of-court statement, without regard to whether the statement was elicited with the aid of undercover law enforcement, the criminal defendant has no absolute right to cross-examine the declarant of such firmly rooted hearsay, notwithstanding that by an objective standard, adversarial testing would add to the fact finder's assessment of the statement's trustworthiness and that cross-examination of the declarant would be of greater than marginal utility. See Bourjaily, supra . As further noted above, if a custodial statement does not fit within a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule but it does bear particularized guarantees of trustworthiness, it is nevertheless subject to the additional constitutional inquiry of whether cross-examination of the declarant would be of greater than marginal utility and whether adversarial testing would add to its reliability. Thus, such statements sought to be admitted as bearing particularized guarantees of trustworthiness are required to undergo a constitutional as well as evidential analysis. The confrontation inquiry regarding adversarial testing and whether cross-examination would be of greater than marginal utility, being of a constitutional dimension, is outcome determinative. Such inquiry is qualitatively unlike the evidential inquiry regarding the particularized guarantees of trustworthiness which considers discrete factual matters surrounding the making of the custodial statement, such as whether the declarant was intoxicated, whether the declarant was asked leading questions, whether the declarant had counsel, et cetera, which, in the aggregate, lead to a conclusion regarding trustworthiness. Given the controlling nature of the constitutional Confrontation Clause inquiry under the second prong of the developed Roberts test as applied to a custodial statement, in my view, if cross-examination would be of greater than marginal utility in assessing the credibility of the declarant and adversarial testing regarding the statement would be of benefit, the Confrontation Clause requires exclusion of the custodial statement, regardless of the assessment of the other factors surrounding the making of the custodial statement. To the extent that the purpose of the Confrontation Clause is to determine trustworthiness, the Confrontation Clause inquiry is neither just another trustworthiness inquiry nor a descriptor of the result of the trustworthiness inquiry; if the answer to the Confrontation Clause inquiry is that adversarial testing would be of benefit to assess the reliability of the custodial statement and cross-examination would be of greater than marginal utility, the statement must be excluded. Whether statements which fit a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule should be subject to explicit Confrontation Clause analysis or, conversely, whether statements which do not fit a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule but do bear particularized guarantees of trustworthiness should be freed of explicit Confrontation Clause analysis is the subject of scholarly treatment; the resolution of these questions, however, is not within the scope or authority of this concurrence. Rather, because the current jurisprudence requires a Confrontation Clause analysis of the Barnett custodial statement which was proferred by the State as bearing particularized guarantees of trustworthiness and because I conclude that cross-examination of Barnett would be of greater than marginal utility in evaluating Barnett's credibility and that adversarial testing would add to the fact finder's assessment of the reliability of the statement, I conclude, as a constitutional matter, that admission of the Barnett statement violated the defendant's right to confrontation under the Sixth Amendment. See, also, Neb. Const. art. I, § 11.