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New Jersey Supreme Court Makes "Bad Law" in Child Abuse Case, Denigrating Our Constitutional Right to Confront Our Accusers (Part 2)

By Lependorf & Silverstein

Part 2 of a 3-part series about the Right to Confrontation. By Peter B. Paris The Historical Use of Exceptions to the Hearsay Rule to Erode the Right to Confrontation In 1980, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Ohio v. Roberts, the Right to Confrontation began its twenty-four year decline. In Roberts, the Supreme Court greatly expanded the use of out-of-court statements in trials by giving trial judges the discretion to admit out-of-court statements without a live witness, so long as the judge felt the overall circumstances indicated that the statement was reliable. Essentially, Roberts allowed the introduction of evidence on a case by case, judge by judge basis. Despite the unreliability of children as witnesses, or perhaps because of it, child abuse prosecutions routinely went forward even though the child-accusers never testified...continue to full post

Full post as published by New Jersey Criminal Defense Blog on July 15, 2008 (boomark / email).