Docket 02-9410
Crawford v. Washington
DecidedMar 8, 2004
9-0unanimous decision
Source: CourtListener.
Court requires face-to-face cross-examination before police-obtained statements can be used against a defendant
What it does
The ruling holds that "testimonial" out-of-court statements — like statements made to police during questioning — cannot be used against a criminal defendant unless the witness is unavailable to testify AND the defendant had a prior chance to cross-examine them. It replaces the previous rule, which let judges admit such statements if they seemed reliable, with a firm requirement of actual cross-examination for testimonial statements.
Who benefits
Criminal defendants facing prosecution based on out-of-court accusatory statements, especially statements made by alleged co-participants or witnesses to police, benefit because prosecutors can no longer use such statements unless the defendant had a chance to cross-examine the speaker.
Who is affected
Prosecutors and trial courts are affected because they can no longer rely on a judge's finding of "reliability" to admit police-obtained witness statements when the witness does not testify and was never cross-examined by the defendant.
Practical impact
Prosecutors nationwide must now ensure that testimonial statements — including police interrogation statements, grand jury testimony, and prior testimony not subject to cross-examination — are excluded unless the witness testifies or was previously cross-examined by the defendant. This significantly limits the use of accomplice statements, 911-adjacent police interviews, and similar evidence in criminal trials, requiring either live testimony or a showing that the witness is truly unavailable after a prior cross-examination opportunity.
Majority reasoning
Justice Scalia's majority reasoned that the historical purpose of the Confrontation Clause was to stop the civil-law practice of using private, ex parte examinations — like those used against Sir Walter Raleigh — as trial evidence without letting the accused confront the accuser. The majority found that at the time of the founding, English and early American law required that testimonial statements (formal accusations like statements to law enforcement) be excluded unless the witness was unavailable and the defendant had a prior chance to cross-examine them. The majority rejected the existing reliability-based test from Ohio v. Roberts because it is unpredictable, lets judges substitute their own reliability judgments for cross-examination, and has repeatedly allowed core testimonial statements — like accomplice confessions to police — to be admitted despite the constitutional problem. Responding to the concurrence's argument that the oath, not the testimonial nature of the statement, was what mattered historically, the majority argued in footnotes that unsworn ex parte statements like Raleigh's accuser's would not have been considered acceptable simply because they lacked an oath, and that treating oath as the dividing line is not supported by the historical record. The Court declined to give a comprehensive definition of "testimonial" but held that police interrogations fall within it under any reasonable definition.
Constitutional question
Does the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause allow prosecutors to use a witness's recorded statement to police against a defendant when the defendant never had a chance to cross-examine that witness, even if a judge finds the statement reliable?
Precedent changed
Overrules Ohio v. Roberts (1980), which had allowed unavailable witnesses' out-of-court statements to be admitted if they fell within a firmly rooted hearsay exception or bore particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.