Court Opinion

ID: 9430413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:41.600205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:24.432927
License: Public Domain

Justice White,
concurring in the judgment.
The Sixth Amendment confers on defendants in criminal cases the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against” *685them. The Court has interpreted these words as meaning more than being allowed to confront the witnesses physically, more than the right to be tried by live testimony rather than affidavits. It includes the opportunity for effective cross-examination of the State’s witnesses. I do not here dispute these interpretations of the constitutional language; but they neither require nor advise the Court to hold, as it does today, that the Amendment is violated whenever a trial judge limits cross-examination of a particular witness and the jury might have received a significantly different impression of the witness’ credibility had cross-examination not been curtailed, even if the limitation and its consequences could not possibly have had any effect on the outcome of the trial.
It makes much more sense to hold that no violation of the Confrontation Clause has occurred unless there is some likelihood that the outcome of the trial was affected. I agree that the Delaware Court erred and that we should remand for consideration of prejudice, but I would not now hold that a constitutional violation occurred. If it is ultimately held that the outcome would have been the same whether or not cross-examination had been limited, no Sixth Amendment violation occurred in this case.
I would thus treat this claim of a Sixth Amendment violation just as the majority would treat limitations on cross-examination that would fall within the trial judge’s “wide latitude insofar as the Confrontation Clause is concerned to impose reasonable limits on . . . cross-examination based on concerns about, among other things, harassment, prejudice, confusion of the issues, the witness’ safety, or interrogation that is repetitive or only marginally relevant.” Ante, at 679. These “reasonable” limitations are not violations at all, obviously because they can have no impact on the fairness of the trial. Yet the curtailment of cross-examination imposed in this case is said to be unreasonable and an infraction of the Amendment even though it may be held beyond reasonable doubt that it had no impact whatsoever on the result the jury reached.
*686No judge welcomes or can ignore being told that he committed a constitutional violation, even if the conviction is saved by a harmless-error finding. Being advised by the Court that there is an area of cross-examination curtailment that is not only harmless but not a constitutional violation but at the same time an area of curtailment that even though harmless is an infraction of our fundamental charter, the judge will surely tend to permit the examination rather than risk being guilty of misunderstanding the constitutional requirements of a fair trial. I would not so undermine the authority of the judge to restrict cross-examination in a manner having no appreciable impact on the reliability of the outcome, particularly since the language and purpose of the specific provision at issue do not otherwise dictate.
Even if it is ultimately held in this case that the error was harmless, as the Court is quite willing to assume will be the case, the judge has been declared derelict and commanded not again to restrict cross-examination in this manner even though he is convinced, and rightly so, that it has no significance whatsoever in terms of the outcome of the trial. With all due respect, I cannot join the Court’s opinion.