Docket 02-9410
Crawford v. Washington
DecidedMar 8, 2004
7-2 for judgment (9-0 outcome, with 2 justices concurring only in judgment)decision
Source: CourtListener.
Court requires face-to-face cross-examination before police-recorded witness statements can be used at trial
Impact8/10
What it does
The ruling holds that "testimonial" statements—like formal 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. This replaces the old rule that let judges admit such statements simply by deciding they seemed trustworthy or reliable.
Who benefits
Criminal defendants facing prosecution based on out-of-court statements made by witnesses to police, particularly in cases like domestic violence prosecutions where a spouse's recorded statement is used but the spouse does not testify.
Who is affected
Prosecutors who rely on police-recorded witness statements when the witness cannot or does not testify at trial, and trial judges who previously had discretion to admit such statements based on case-by-case reliability findings.
Practical impact
Prosecutors can no longer introduce testimonial statements (such as recorded police interrogation statements) from unavailable witnesses unless the defendant previously had an opportunity to cross-examine that witness. This particularly affects domestic violence and similar cases where police statements from victims or witnesses who later become unavailable had been used at trial; going forward, such statements are inadmissible unless cross-examination requirements are satisfied, though nontestimonial hearsay remains governed by ordinary state evidence rules.
Majority reasoning
The majority, through historical analysis of English common law and the Framers' concerns about civil-law style ex parte examinations (like the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh), found that the core evil the Confrontation Clause targeted was the use of untested out-of-court accusations, especially statements to government officials such as police. The Court concluded that the Constitution requires reliability to be tested specifically through cross-examination, not through a judge's after-the-fact assessment of trustworthiness. The majority rejected the existing test from Ohio v. Roberts, which allowed hearsay statements bearing "particularized guarantees of trustworthiness" to be admitted, finding this test both too broad (sweeping in non-testimonial statements) and too narrow (allowing plainly testimonial ex parte statements to be admitted based on subjective reliability findings). The majority pointed to numerous lower court decisions applying Roberts inconsistently and sometimes admitting core testimonial statements like accomplice confessions, showing the old test failed to protect against the very abuses the Clause was meant to prevent. Responding to the concurrence's claim that unsworn statements were treated differently at the founding, the majority argued in a footnote that it is implausible the Framers who condemned trial by sworn ex parte affidavit found unsworn ex parte accusations acceptable, and pointed to Raleigh's trial (which involved an unsworn statement) as long considered a paradigmatic confrontation violation.
Constitutional question
Does the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause allow prosecutors to use an unavailable witness's recorded statement to police against a defendant, without the defendant ever having a chance to cross-examine that witness, just because a judge finds the statement reliable?
Precedent changed
Overrules Ohio v. Roberts (1980), which had allowed unavailable witnesses' hearsay statements to be admitted upon a judicial finding of "particularized guarantees of trustworthiness" or if they fell within a "firmly rooted hearsay exception."