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Full-Text Articles in Law
Taking Confrontation Seriously: Does Crawford Mean That Confessions Must Be Cross-Examined?, Mark Summers
Taking Confrontation Seriously: Does Crawford Mean That Confessions Must Be Cross-Examined?, Mark Summers
Mark Summers
This article focuses on the applicability of the Supreme Court's decision in Crawford v. Washington to one subcategory of party admissions – defendants’ confessions “taken by police officers in the course of interrogations.” Such statements fall within Crawford’s core class of testimonial statements, which must be subjected to cross-examination either at the time they are made or at trial in order to satisfy the Confrontation Clause. In some post-Crawford cases, defendants have argued that the failure to comply with Crawford should bar the prosecution from using their confessions. The lower courts have uniformly held that Crawford does not apply to …
Counsel And Confrontation, Todd E. Pettys
Counsel And Confrontation, Todd E. Pettys
Todd E. Pettys
Responding to the Court’s recent reworking of its confrontation jurisprudence, I argue that, under the Anglo-American common-law principles that the Confrontation Clause now incorporates, defendants are not entitled to an attorney’s assistance when interrogating witnesses prior to trial. Although the Assistance of Counsel Clause and the Due Process Clauses will pick up the slack in many cases, I contend that there are other instances in which the Constitution now leaves unrepresented defendants responsible for cross-examining witnesses on their own. I suggest that legislative reform may be necessary to ameliorate the new constitutional landscape’s deficiencies.