Title: The Cryptographic Coroner’s Report on Ohio v. Roberts
Abstract: For more than twenty years, Supreme Court's holding in Ohio v. Roberts (1980) established controlling legal standard governing constitutional limits on admission of hearsay evidence against a criminal defendant, and circumstances under which exclusion of such evidence might be required by Sixth Amendment right of accused to be confronted with witnesses against him.Those constitutional limits were completely overturned in somewhat piecemeal fashion, however, in a pair of decisions that were handed down by Supreme Court in 2004 and 2006, both of them written by Justice Antonin Scalia. As it happens, Justice Scalia's opinions overturned Roberts decision with such unusual subtlety and indirection that a great number of state and federal courts were unaware that Court had done so, even after examining same cases in which Court had laid that earlier precedent to rest.This article includes a precise explanation as to how Court's decision to finally overturn Roberts was announced with such unusual indirection that decision was missed not merely by a number of lower appellate courts but even official Reporter of Decisions at Supreme Court, and why Roberts decision was in fact ultimately laid to rest in the legal equivalent of a covert operation.
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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