Opinion ID: 625291
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Plain Language of the Sixth Amendment Places with the Prosecution the Burden of Calling Accusers to the Stand

Text: 1. The Confrontation Clause Grants Defendants a Right and Not a Mere Privilege The Sixth Amendment commands: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him. U.S. Const. amend. VI. The language drafted by our founding fathers and unchanged since 1791 could not be clearer. The right is conferred in the passive voice: a defendant has a right to be confronted with his accusers, not merely the privilege to confront his accusers. See Coy, 487 U.S. at 1017, 108 S.Ct. 2798. The Confrontation Clause ... language, employing the passive voice, imposes a burden of production on the prosecution, not on the defense. Thomas v. United States, 914 A.2d 1, 16 (D.C.2006). The defendant's rights to be informed of the charges against him, to receive a speedy and public trial, to be tried by a jury, to be assisted by counsel, and to be confronted with adverse witnesses are designed to restrain the prosecution by regulating the procedures by which it presents its case against the accused.  Taylor v. Illinois, 484 U.S. 400, 410, 410 n. 14, 108 S.Ct. 646, 98 L.Ed.2d 798 (1988) (emphasis added, internal citation omitted) (comparing this with the Compulsory Process Clause, which, on the other hand[,] ... operates exclusively at the defendant's initiative and provides him with affirmative aid in presenting his defense); see Bullcoming v. New Mexico, ___ U.S. ____, 131 S.Ct. 2705, 2718, 180 L.Ed.2d 610 (2011) (holding that the prosecution bears the burden to preserve a defendant's Confrontation Clause rights). Because a defendant has the right to be confronted with his accusers, the prosecution consequently has the burden to confront the defendant. This requires that the prosecution subpoena the witness, that the prosecution put that accusing witness on the stand, and that the witness actually testify. It is not the defendant's obligation to present the prosecution's witnesses or to cure the prosecution's errors. Bullcoming, 131 S.Ct. at 2718; Taylor, 484 U.S. at 410, 108 S.Ct. 646. Recently, the Supreme Court affirmed this basic premise in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, reiterating that the Confrontation Clause requires the prosecution to subpoena an available affiant if it chooses to introduce that affiant's ex parte testimonial statement against a defendant. 557 U.S. 305, 129 S.Ct. 2527, 2533, 2542, 174 L.Ed.2d 314 (2009). Although the defendant also could have subpoenaed the affiant, the Court held that the defendant did not carry that burden: Converting the prosecution's duty under the Confrontation Clause into the defendant's privilege under state law of the Compulsory Process Clause shifts the consequences of adverse-witness no-shows from the State to the accused. More fundamentally, the Confrontation Clause imposes a burden on the prosecution to present its witnesses, not on the defendant to bring those adverse witnesses into court. Id. at 2540. I find no compelling distinction between the present case and Melendez-Diaz. Bringing the witness to the courthouse would mean little if the witness was not also obliged to take the stand, just as putting the witness on the stand means little if the witness lawfully invokes a right or privilege not to testify. While Melendez-Diaz post-dated the Kentucky Supreme Court decision at issue here, it did not provide a new or novel interpretation of the Confrontation Clause. See Cullen v. Pinholster, ___ U.S. ____, 131 S.Ct. 1388, 1399, 179 L.Ed.2d 557 (2011) (citing Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63, 71-72, 123 S.Ct. 1166, 155 L.Ed.2d 144 (2003)) (explaining that the reasonableness of a state court decision is to be measured only against rules that existed at the time the decision was issued). Instead, Melendez-Diaz performed a rather straightforward application of [the] holding in Crawford  and merely confirms the plain language of the Sixth Amendment and its undisturbed interpretation by the Supreme Court. 129 S.Ct. at 2533. It has always been clear that the Sixth Amendment is not satisfied where the prosecution presents its evidence via ex parte testimonials and waits for the defendant to subpoena the witness (as in Melendez-Diaz ) or to call the witness to the stand (as is the case here). The Confrontation Clause requires that the prosecution call its available witnesses to the stand to face the defendant, rather than simply making its witnesses available for the defendant to call. 2. The Crawford Exception Our Supreme Court has heretofore held that where the prosecution does not put an accuser on the stand to directly accuse the defendant, it may admit a testimonial, hearsay accusation against the defendant under only one exception: where the declarant is unavailable, but the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the declarant with regard to the accusation. See Bryant, 131 S.Ct. at 1153 (We therefore limited the Confrontation Clause's reach to testimonial statements and held that in order for testimonial evidence to be admissible, the Sixth Amendment demands what the common law required: unavailability and a prior opportunity for cross-examination. (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)); Crawford, 541 U.S. at 59, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The Supreme Court has never held that the prosecution may admit a testimonial, hearsay accusation against the defendant if the declarant is seated in a pew in the back of the courtroom, but is allegedly willing to testify. The Supreme Court has similarly never held that a defendant waives his Confrontation Clause right if he fails to call an available accuser to the stand and cure the prosecution's violation of his Confrontation Clause right. There is but one way for the prosecution to admit into evidence a testimonial, hearsay accusation against a defendant: establish unavailability of the declarant and show that the defendant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine that witness. Moreover, if the defendant does not have the burden to bring the prosecution's witnesses to the stand, the defendant cannot be deemed to have waived his rights for failing to do so. The defendant does not have the duty to cure the prosecution's Confrontation Clause errors. Importantly, a defendant is deemed to have waived his Confrontation Clause right by pleading guilty, stipulating to the admission of evidence, failing to preserve error, or procuring the unavailability of a witness. See Illinois v. Allen, 397 U.S. 337, 342-43, 90 S.Ct. 1057, 25 L.Ed.2d 353 (1970); Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 243, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969); United States v. Chun Ya Cheung, 350 Fed.Appx. 19, 21-22 (6th Cir.2009); United States v. Johnson, 440 F.3d 832, 845-46 (6th Cir.2006). If a defendant must call the prosecution's witness, he would be faced with a catch-22, wherein he waives his Confrontation Clause right if he fails to call the prosecution's witness, but he also waives his Confrontation Clause right if he calls the witness. 3. Constitutional Prerequisites Support the Plain Language of the Confrontation Clause As a matter of policy, if we permit the prosecution to introduce accusations merely by having potential witnesses present in the courtroom rather than by producing them as actual witnesses for purposes of confrontation, the prosecution has only to gain and the defendant has only to lose. In such a situation, a defendant will be forced to make a choice. On one hand, he could call the prosecution's witness as a hostile witness and be permitted to ask leading questions, but he would not have had the opportunity to immediately cross-examine the witness following the prosecution's introduction of the accusation, [1] and he would risk the possibility of eliciting unfavorable testimony that would not otherwise have been presented. In the alternative, the defendant could decide to avoid these risks by not calling the witness and forgoing the opportunity to question him altogether. In many instances, the defendant will find that calling the witness is not worth the risk, as Peak did. Under the prosecution's approach, the prosecution is provided with an overwhelming advantage. If the defendant calls the witness, the prosecution avoids its responsibility under the Confrontation Clause of producing the witness by putting him on the stand and is alleviated of its burden to provide direct examination. However, if the defendant chooses not to call the witness, only the version of the facts that the prosecution finds helpful to its case is introduced; there is no compliance with the requirements of the Confrontation Clause, and the prosecution avoids the possibility that the witness will be effectively cross-examined or change his story in response to cross-examination, and thereby jeopardize the prosecution's case. The prosecution also avoids the responsibility of being the proponent of the witness' testimony. Indeed, in this case, the prosecution likely did not call Meeks to the stand because Meeks disputed the reliability and veracity of his recorded admissions and accusations and would likely discredit the prosecution's evidence. By purporting to resolve the Confrontation Clause violation against Peak by merely requiring Meeks to waive his Fifth Amendment right but not put him on the stand, the trial court permitted the prosecution to introduce all of the testimonial, hearsay evidence that it hoped to admit but avoid the introduction of any contradictory evidence. The prosecution should not be permitted to resort to such opportunistic manipulation. The Confrontation Clause may make the prosecution of criminals more burdensome, but that is equally true of the right to trial by jury and the privilege against self-incrimination. Melendez-Diaz, 129 S.Ct. at 2540. 4. Right Against Self-Incrimination A defendant's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination may also be implicated by the defendant being forced to call a witness who is expected to incriminate the defendant in order for the defendant to avail himself of his Confrontation Clause right. Because the defendant would be the party calling the witness, the defendant could easily be placed in the untenable position, in front of the jury, of appearing to be the proponent of the witness' testimony which ends up incriminating the defendant. United States v. Hubbell, 530 U.S. 27, 36-38, 120 S.Ct. 2037, 147 L.Ed.2d 24 (2000) (discussing right against self-incrimination); Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 761, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966). Neither the right against self-incrimination nor the Confrontation Clause right is subordinate to the othersuch that a defendant can be forced to relinquish one right in order to assert the other. See Simmons v. United States, 390 U.S. 377, 394, 88 S.Ct. 967, 19 L.Ed.2d 1247 (1968) (finding a defendant's compelled election between his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights to be intolerable); see also McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 213, 91 S.Ct. 1454, 28 L.Ed.2d 711 (1971) (holding that the threshold question is whether compelling the election [between constitutional rights] impairs to an appreciable extent any of the policies behind the rights involved).

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254, permits us to grant habeas relief only where a state court judgment resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States or resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). Clearly established federal law refers to the holdings, as opposed to the dicta, of [the Supreme Court's] decisions as of the time of the relevant state-court decision. Williams v. Taylor, 529 U.S. 362, 412, 120 S.Ct. 1495, 146 L.Ed.2d 389 (2000). A decision is contrary to clearly established federal law if the state court arrives at a conclusion opposite to that reached by [the Supreme] Court on a question of law or if the state court decides a case differently than this Court has on a set of materially indistinguishable facts. Id. at 412-13, 120 S.Ct. 1495. An unreasonable application of clearly established federal law occurs where the state court identifies the correct governing legal principle from [the Supreme Court's] decisions but unreasonably applies that principle to the facts of the prisoner's case. Id. at 413, 120 S.Ct. 1495; Harrington v. Richter, ___ U.S. ___, 131 S.Ct. 770, 785, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011). We ask whether fairminded jurists could disagree as to the decision. Harrington, 131 S.Ct. at 786 (quoting Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 664, 124 S.Ct. 2140, 158 L.Ed.2d 938 (2004)). We are reminded that an unreasonable application of law is different from an incorrect application of law. Williams, 529 U.S. at 410, 120 S.Ct. 1495; Harrington, 131 S.Ct. at 785.
Peak's Confrontation Clause right was unquestionably violated. At Peak's trial, the prosecution admitted into evidence over Peak's objectionand played three timeshis non-testifying, co-conspirator's testimonial hearsay confession implicating Peak as the triggerman. Meeks never took the stand, and the exception in Crawford did not apply because Meeks was available and Peak had not had a prior opportunity to cross-examine him. This constitutional violation is clear under the simplest, most straightforward application of the Confrontation Clause and Supreme Court jurisprudence, as outlined above. See Lilly, 527 U.S. at 131, 119 S.Ct. 1887 ([T]he admission of a nontestifying accomplice's confession, which shifted responsibility and implicated the defendant as the triggerman, `plainly denie[s] the defendant the right of cross-examination secured by the Confrontation Clause.' (quoting Douglas v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 415, 419, 85 S.Ct. 1074, 13 L.Ed.2d 934 (1965)) (internal alteration omitted)). Despite this incontrovertible violation, the Kentucky Supreme Court plurality ruled that Peak's Confrontation Clause rights were not violated. The Kentucky Supreme Court thus unreasonably applied the Sixth Amendment to Peak's case and unreasonably extended a legal principle that permits the use of testimonial hearsay when the prosecution is unable to call its witnesses to the stand, see Crawford, 541 U.S. at 42-43, 124 S.Ct. 1354, to situations where the prosecution is able to do so but chooses not to. It also permitted the admission of a non-testifying accomplice's confession implicating Peak, contrary to the rule in Bruton, 391 U.S. at 132, 88 S.Ct. 1620. Habeas relief is therefore warranted under the standards set forth in § 2254(d)(1), as interpreted by Williams and Harrington, and their progeny. Also indicative of the Kentucky Supreme Court's unreasonable application of the Confrontation Clause in Peak's case is the fact that the Kentucky Supreme Court itself recently reconsidered the issue and came to the opposite conclusion. See Coleman v. Commonwealth, No. 2008-SC-72-MR, 2009 WL 3526657, 2009 Ky. Unpub. LEXIS 128 (Ky. Oct. 29, 2009). The Kentucky Supreme Court majority in Coleman correctly held that there is a Confrontation Clause violation where the prosecution admits witnesses' untested accusations against a defendant without calling the witnesses to the stand, despite the fact that the witnesses [are] present in the courthouse under the prosecution's subpoena and are able and allegedly willing to testify. Id. at , 2009 Ky. Unpub. LEXIS 128 at -11. The Kentucky Supreme Court went so far as to hold that [t]he only possible conclusion in this situation is that the defendant's [Confrontation Clause] rights were violated. Id. at , 2009 Ky. Unpub. LEXIS 128 at . While the fact that the relevant Coleman and Peak factual scenarios are nearly identical but yielded different results does not necessarily establish unreasonableness under § 2254(d)(2), it does raise[] a red flag to possible `extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice system.' Rice v. White, 660 F.3d 242, 255 (6th Cir.2011). Finally, one of our sister circuits recently applied Crawford to a habeas claim nearly identical to Peak's claim. See Jones v. Basinger, 635 F.3d 1030, 1041 (7th Cir.2011). In Jones, during a defendant's trial for robbery and murder, the prosecution admitted a testimonial, hearsay accusation of a declarant who had been subpoenaed by the prosecution and was available to testify, without calling that witness to the stand. Id. The court found no reasonable room for doubt that the Confrontation Clause was violated by this conduct and that habeas relief was warranted due to the state court's clear error, beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement, in permitting such a violation. Id. at 1043, 1052. In sum, the Kentucky Supreme Court plurality was objectively unreasonable in its application of the Sixth Amendment, and its decision was contrary to clearly established federal law.
Despite the centuries old rule that the prosecution must put its witnesses on the stand, the majority here suggests that it was not unreasonable for a Kentucky Supreme Court plurality to interpret the Confrontation Clause to mean that so long as the prosecution's witnesses are sitting in a pew in the back of the courtroom and allege that they are willing to testify, the defendant's right to be confronted with his accusers is satisfiedeven if the prosecution has admitted those witnesses' untested, out-of-court accusations into evidence without calling them to the stand. The majority would grant the defendant the mere privilege of calling the prosecution's witnesses to the stand, on his own initiative, rather than the right, in the language of the Sixth Amendment, to be confronted with those witnesses. This is in direct contradiction to the plain language of the Sixth Amendment and our Supreme Court's jurisprudence. See Section II, supra. The majority endeavors to explain its irrational decision. Specifically, the majority believes that the Kentucky Supreme Court plurality's decision was not unreasonable, because although some points [of] Crawford seem[] to equate confrontation with cross-examination[,] ... Crawford also contains language that suggests that confrontation requires only that the witness be made available to be called at trial, not that the witness be put on the stand for immediate cross-examination. (Maj. Op. at 473.) This latter proposition is flatly incorrect. Although Supreme Court jurisprudence includes language such as appears at trial, see Crawford, 541 U.S. at 53-54, 59, 124 S.Ct. 1354; Davis, 547 U.S. at 822 n. 1, 126 S.Ct. 2266 (drawing language from Crawford ), this language, standing alone and as used by the majority, is ripped from its context. The language at issue in Crawford is as follows: the Framers would not have allowed admission of testimonial statements of a witness who did not appear at trial unless he was unavailable to testify, and the defendant had had a prior opportunity for cross-examination, Crawford, 541 U.S. at 53-54, 124 S.Ct. 1354, [the English common law] conditioned admissibility of an absent witness's examination on unavailability and a prior opportunity to cross-examine, id. at 54, 124 S.Ct. 1354, and [t]estimonial statements of witnesses absent from trial have been admitted only where the declarant is unavailable, and only where the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine, id. at 59, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The crucial difference between the circumstances of the present case and the holding in Crawford is that in each of these statements, the Supreme Court frames the Crawford test as applying to situations where the prosecution was unable to call the witnesses to the stand, not situations where the prosecution was able to call the witness to the stand but simply chose not to, as in the instant case. Furthermore, as discussed above, the plain meaning of appear at trial, in the Confrontation Clause context, must mean that the accusers are brought to the stand by the prosecution and not merely that they are in the courtroom. For a witness to be in the courtroom but not testifyor for a witness take the stand but refuse to testifywould render meaningless the design of the Confrontation Clause to prevent the evils of the use of ex parte examinations against the defendant. Bryant, 131 S.Ct. at 1152. It would fail to address the need for the witness to be sworn in and impressed with the seriousness of the matter, the defendant's cross-examination, and the jury's ability to decide the witness' credibility first-hand. Green, 399 U.S. at 158, 90 S.Ct. 1930; Craig, 497 U.S. at 845-46, 110 S.Ct. 3157. Moreover, the defendant cannot be required to cure the prosecution's error of failing to call the witness to the stand by the defendant calling the witness as a hostile witness and asking leading questions, because the Supreme Court has interpreted the plain language of the Confrontation Clause as providing defendant with a right and not a privilege. Taylor, 484 U.S. at 410, 108 S.Ct. 646. The other allegedly problematic language in Crawford, which the Kentucky Supreme Court plurality explicitly relied on in making its decision, is similarly taken out of context. Footnote nine of Justice Scalia's majority opinion provides, When the declarant appears for cross-examination at trial, the Confrontation Clause places no constraints at all on the use of his prior testimonial statements.... The Clause does not bar admission of a statement so long as the declarant is present at trial to defend or explain it. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 59 n. 9, 124 S.Ct. 1354. That footnote was part of a discussion of scenarios where, again, a witness was actually put on the stand by the prosecution to testify, but the reliability of his testimony was at issue. Thus, the present at trial language did not provide a new interpretation of the Sixth Amendment that permits the admission of testimonial hearsay when the declarant is merely seated in the courtroom but not brought to the stand. The reasoning of the Kentucky Supreme Court's dissent on this matter is persuasive: [In that footnote], Justice Scalia was responding to concerns expressed in Chief Justice Rehnquist's dissenting opinion that the reliability of some out-of-court statements cannot be replicated even if the declarant testifies to the same matters in court. ... Obviously, both Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Rehnquist were assuming that the declarant would testify, but the Chief Justice believed that the prior statement might be more reliable than the in-court testimony. Peak v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, 197 S.W.3d 536, 550-51 (Ky.2006) (Cooper, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). It was thus patently unreasonable for the Kentucky justices in the plurality to use the present at trial language in footnote nine to reject the plain language of the Sixth Amendment.