Court Opinion

ID: 9705470
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:08:09.778669+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:16.504026
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
dissenting and concurring.
The majority thoughtfully addresses a thorny issue that asks how trial courts can protect child complainants without sacrific*545ing the defendant’s constitutional due process rights. In upholding the trial court’s decision that confrontation is not required when the child is unavailable to testify, the majority relies on existing statutory law, as indeed it must since courts are not legislative bodies. But I respectfully submit that that existing law does not adequately protect the defendant’s constitutional rights to cross-examine and confront the witnesses against him, especially in light of Crawford v. Washington.1
As our sister court in Waco has provided,
In Crawford, the Supreme Court revisited its prior decision in Ohio v. Roberts, in which the Court had held that the admission of the hearsay statement of an unavailable witness does not violate the right of confrontation so long as the statement “falls under a ‘firmly rooted hearsay exception’ or bears ‘particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.’ ” The Court concluded in Crawford that the Roberts rationale was not “faithful to the original meaning of the Confrontation Clause.”
In place of the Roberts standard, the Court adopted a two-part test, depending on whether the statement at issue is “testimonial” or “non-testimonial.”2
In Crawford, the Supreme Court explained,
Where nontestimonial hearsay is at issue, it is wholly consistent with the Framers’ design to afford the States flexibility in them development of hearsay law — as does Roberts, and as would an approach that exempted such statements from Confrontation Clause scrutiny altogether. Where testimonial evidence is at issue, however, the Sixth Amendment demands what the common law required: unavailability and a prior opportunity for cross-examination.3
The Confrontation Clause provides, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”4 As our sister court in Austin has pointed out,
A central holding of Crawford is that the Confrontation Clause is a rule of procedure, not of evidence. “If there is one theme that emerges from Crawford, it is that the Confrontation Clause confers a powerful and fundamental right that is no longer subsumed by the evi-dentiary rules governing the admissibility of hearsay statements.” The constitutional requirement that a testimonial statement be subject to cross-examination in criminal cases “does not evaporate when testimony happens to fall within some broad modern hearsay exception, even if the exception is sufficient in other circumstances.” In this respect, it is irrelevant that a testimonial statement may meet the excited utterance exception test. Mere reliability is not enough to satisfy the Confrontation Clause where the extrajudicial statements are of a testimonial nature. “Leaving the regulation of out-of-court statements to the law of evidence would render the Confrontation Clause powerless to prevent even the most flagrant inquisitorial practices.” Thus, under Crawford, the Confrontation Clause analysis will usually turn on the question of whether a particular statement is testimonial or nontestimonial in nature. *546On the other hand, the Roberts line of eases may remain instructive or controlling with regard to nontestimonial hearsay.5
Section 2(b) of article 38.071 of the code of criminal procedure, the statute at issue in the case before us, provides,
If a recording is made under Subsection (a) of this section and after an indictment is returned or a complaint has been filed, by motion of the attorney representing the state or the attorney representing the defendant and on the approval of the court, both attorneys may propound written interrogatories that shall be presented by the same neutral individual who made the initial inquiries, if possible, and recorded under the same or similar circumstances of the original recording with the time and date of the inquiry clearly indicated in the recording.6
The statement contemplated by the statute is clearly testimonial, as the majority has declared. But written interrogatories presented by a neutral individual are neither confrontation nor cross-examination as mandated by state and federal constitutions and Crawford. This statutory provision, instead of curing the confrontation problem when the child is unavailable, compounds the problem by allowing the creation of yet another testimonial statement not subject to the procedural safeguards of confrontation and cross-examination.
The Craivford court held that “[w]here testimonial statements are at issue, the only indicium of reliability sufficient to satisfy constitutional demands is the one the Constitution actually prescribes: confrontation.”7 Additionally, as Judge Cochran has noted in a unanimous opinion of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals,
The Confrontation Clause may act as a brake upon the admission of “testimonial” child outcry statements unless the child actually testifies or is presently unavailable but has been subject to cross-examination in a prior proceeding.8
Consequently, while I agree with the majority’s disposition of the remaining issues in the case now before this court, I must respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding that the article 38.071 provision for written interrogatories satisfies the confrontation and cross-examination requirements of due process.

. 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004).

. Hanson v. State, 180 S.W.3d 726, 731 (Tex. App.-Waco 2005, no pet.) (citations omitted).

. 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. at 1374.

. U.S. Const, amend. VI; see Crawford, 541 U.S. at 42, 124 S.Ct. at 1359.

. Lagunas v. State, 187 S.W.3d 503, 515 (Tex. App.-Austin 2005, pet. ref'd) (citations omitted).

. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.071, § 2(b) (Vernon 2005).

. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 69, 124 S.Ct. at 1374.

. Martinez v. State, 178 S.W.3d 806, 811 n. 21 (Tex.Crim.App.2005).