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Another Can Of "Crawford" Worms: Certificates Of Nonexistence Of Public Record And The Confrontation Clause, Keith Hollingshead-Cook

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right .. . to be confronted with the witnesses against him."' When the Supreme Court decided Crawford v. Washington in 2004, it established a new standard for assessing the scope of this right and determining when hearsay is admissible as trial evidence against a criminal defendant. Rather than basing decisions regarding a defendant's right to confrontation on a judicial inquiry into the reliability of a particular statement, an approach typified by the Court's earlier decision of Ohio v. …