Opinion ID: 625291
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Specific Problems with the Majority's Acceptance of the Kentucky Supreme Court Plurality's Decision

Text: 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.