Opinion ID: 1058123
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Federal and State Constitutional

Text: Rights to Confrontation The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” This constitutional guarantee is applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 403 (1965). In addition, Article I, Section 9 of our own Tennessee Constitution guarantees the accused the right “to meet the witnesses face to face.” Although the two provisions are not identically worded, this Court has largely adopted the standards used by the United States Supreme Court under the Sixth Amendment in determining whether the Tennessee constitutional right has been violated. State v. Bush, 942 S.W.2d 489, 511 n.2 (Tenn. 1997); State v. Middlebrooks, 840 S.W.2d 317, 332 (Tenn. 1992); State v. Causby, 706 S.W.2d 628, 631 (Tenn. 1986); State v. Armes, 607 S.W.2d 234, 236-37 (Tenn. 1980). -6- The Confrontation Clause provides two types of protection for criminal defendants: (1) the right to physically face the witnesses who testify against them and (2) the right to cross-examine the witnesses. State v. Williams, 913 S.W.2d 462, 465 (Tenn. 1996) (citing Pennsylvania v. Ritchie, 480 U.S. 39, 51 (1987), and Middlebrooks, 840 S.W.2d at 332). “The central concern of the Confrontation Clause is to ensure the reliability of the evidence against a criminal defendant by subjecting it to rigorous testing in the context of an adversary proceeding before the trier of fact.” Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836, 845 (1990); see also California v. Green, 399 U.S. 149, 157-58 (1970). With respect to the right to physically confront one’s accusers, this Court has observed that “[t]he ‘face to face’ language found in the Tennessee Constitution has been held to impose a higher right than that found in the federal constitution.” State v. Deuter, 839 S.W.2d 391, 395 (Tenn. 1992). A defendant exercises his right of confrontation through the legal procedure of crossexamination, described as the “‘greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.’” Green, 399 U.S. at 158 (quoting 5 Wigmore § 1367). For almost twenty-five years, the question of whether the prior statement of an unavailable witness could be admitted into evidence against a criminal defendant at trial was governed by Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56 (1980). That case established the rule that when a hearsay declarant is not present for cross-examination at trial, the Confrontation Clause normally requires a showing that he is unavailable. Even then, his statement is admissible only if it bears adequate “indicia of reliability.” Reliability can be inferred without more in a case where the evidence falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception. In other cases, the evidence must be excluded, at least absent a showing of particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. Id. at 66. Thus, under Roberts, an out-of-court statement by an unavailable witness is admissible if it (1) falls within a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule or (2) contains such particularized guarantees of trustworthiness that adversarial testing of the statement through cross-examination would add little to the assessment of whether the evidence is reliable.