Opinion ID: 891699
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Good-Cause Spectrum

Text: {40} For illustrative purposes, we set forth the need-for-confrontation analysis as a kind of spectrum or sliding scale with extremes at either end and much balancing and weighing of competing interests in between. Combinations of the non-exhaustive factors that affect the utility of cross examination create infinite degrees of cause, a full spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, where good cause for not requiring confrontation is likely, we would include situations in which the state's evidence is uncontested, corroborated by other reliable evidence, and documented by a reliable source without a motive to fabricate, or possibly situations where the evidence is about an objective conclusion, a routine recording, or a negative fact, making the demeanor and credibility of the witness less relevant to the truth-finding process. On this side of the good-cause spectrum, live testimony and cross examination offer almost no utility to the fact-finding process. {41} On the no good cause end of the spectrum, evidence is contested by the defendant, unsupported or contradicted, and its source has a motive to fabricate; it is about a subjective, judgment-based observation that is subject to inference and interpretation, and makes a conclusion that is central to the necessary proof that the defendant violated probation. In such a case, the state's failure to produce the witness, for almost any reason, deprives a defendant of due process. Between the two extremes there is no bright-line rule for determining good causebut then, that is the nature of due process; it is flexible and calls for such procedural protections as the particular situation demands. Morrissey, 408 U.S. at 481, 92 S.Ct. 2593.