Court Opinion

ID: 9689479
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:36:00.690763+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:48.980358
License: Public Domain

ROBERT L. Brown, Justice, concurring. I do not disagree with the legal reasoning of the majority opinion in any respect. My problem is I do not believe Smith has presented this court with sufficient information to make a merits determination on the Confrontation Clause. What does “outside his [Smith’s] line of sight” mean? How was the courtroom configured with respect to Smith and the child witnesses? Did the child witnesses have their backs to Smith or were they at an angle? None of this is clear from the record presented to this court, and it was Smith’s obligation to make it clear for our review. I would affirm based on Smith’s failure to present this court with a record of what occurred so that we can make an intelligent decision. See Tarry v. State, 289 Ark. 193, 710 S.W.2d 202 (1986). Without that record, we can only speculate about how Smith and the child witnesses were positioned and whether the Confrontation Clause was implicated in any respect.