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Waiting for Melendez: The Confrontation Clause Revisited.

By Marks & Katz, LLC

 Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Sometimes the United States Supreme Court does true justice for criminal defendants. Miranda v. Arizona remains the best protection from the Court for suppressing coerced statements. U.S. v. Booker and its progeny led more judges to sentence below sentencing guidelines and prevented appellate courts from changing such departures. Crawford v. Washington put stronger teeth into the Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against a criminal defendant, so long as testimonial evidence is involved.  Being only four years old, Crawford spells a radical overruling of the 1980 Ohio v. Roberts case that took an overly-crabbed view of the Confrontation Clause. Because Crawford is so relatively new, and because it departs so radically from what judges and the vast majority of lawyers learned in law school, judges must not only be educated about Crawford, but also divested of any temptation to do mental gymnastics to issue rulings more crabbed than Crawford dictates...continue to full post

Full post as published by Underdog on November 20, 2008 (boomark / email).