Opinion ID: 2999183
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sixth Amendment—Crawford v. Washington

Text: Kelley asks us to hold that the admission of Daniel and Terra Patterson’s hearsay statements at his revocation hearing violated his Sixth Amendment right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. But by its own terms, the Sixth Amendment applies only in “criminal prosecutions,” U.S. CONST. amend. VI, and the Supreme Court long ago held that revocation hearings are not criminal prosecutions for purposes of the Sixth Amendment. Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U.S. 778, 782 (1973) (“Probation revocation, like parole revocation, is not a stage of a criminal prosecution.”); Morrissey, 408 U.S. at 480 (“revocation of parole is not part of a criminal prosecution and thus the full panoply of rights due a defendant in such a proceeding does not apply to parole revocations”). Morrissey held that due process requires a flexible notice-and-hearing procedure—including a limited right of confrontation—in the revocation context. Morrissey, 408 U.S. at 488-90. Morrissey and Gagnon involved parole and probation revocations, respectively, but their holdings apply to supervised release revocations as well. See, e.g., United No. 05-1884 5 States v. Colt, 126 F.3d 981, 986 (7th Cir. 1996) (revocation of supervised release was merely a modification of defendant’s original sentence); United States v. Pratt, 52 F.3d 671, 675 (7th Cir. 1995) (“a revocation hearing is not part of a criminal prosecution”) (citing Morrissey, 408 U.S. at 480). Kelley argues that the Supreme Court’s decision in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), undermines Morrissey and Gagnon and makes the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause applicable at revocation hearings. He suggests that when the Morrissey Court identified a “right to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses” as one of the “minimum requirements of due process” at state parole revocation hearings, Morrissey, 408 U.S. at 489, it had in mind a confrontation right rooted in the Sixth Amendment and applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Kelley thus invites us now to apply the Sixth Amendment to revocation hearings and conclude that Crawford2 prohibits admission of testimonial hearsay of the sort on which the district court relied to find him guilty of Grade A supervised release violations. We decline this invitation. Crawford changed nothing with respect to revocation hearings. Morrissey held unequivocally that revocation hearings are not “criminal prosecutions” for purposes of the Sixth Amendment, so the “full panoply of rights due a defendant in such a proceeding” does not apply. Morrissey, 408 U.S. at 480. This “full panoply of rights” is precisely the list of protections found in the Sixth Amendment, which by its terms applies only to criminal prosecutions. U.S. CONST. amend. VI. Because 2 Crawford held that the Sixth Amendment generally prohibits the admission of testimonial hearsay at criminal trials unless the witness is unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the witness. Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 68 (2004). 6 No. 05-1884 revocation proceedings are not criminal prosecutions, Sixth Amendment rights are not implicated. Morrissey, 408 U.S. at 480. Morrissey’s articulation of a limited confrontation right in revocation proceedings was explicitly grounded in considerations of due process, not the Sixth Amendment. Id. at 485-90. Crawford dealt with the introduction of testimonial hearsay at a criminal trial—a “criminal prosecution[ ],” as that term is used in the Sixth Amendment. The Supreme Court did not mention revocation hearings or Morrissey in Crawford; nothing in the case can be read to suggest that Morrissey and Gagnon have been implicitly altered or that revocation proceedings should now be characterized as “criminal prosecutions” within the meaning of the Sixth Amendment. Several other circuits have declined to extend Crawford to revocation proceedings. See, e.g., United States v. Rondeau, 430 F.3d 44, 47-48 (1st Cir. 2005); United States v. Aspinall, 389 F.3d 332, 342-43 (2d Cir. 2004); United States v. Kirby, 418 F.3d 621, 627 (6th Cir. 2005); United States v. Martin, 382 F.3d 840, 844 n.4 (8th Cir. 2004); United States v. Hall, 419 F.3d 980, 985-86 (9th Cir. 2005); Ash v. Reilly, 431 F.3d 826, 829-30 (D.C. Cir. 2005).3 We now join them. Because supervised release revocation hearings are not criminal prosecutions for purposes of the Sixth Amendment, Crawford does not apply.