Sixth Amendment

April 28, 2011

Another loss for the Confrontation Clause: the Supreme Court’s decision in Michigan v. Bryant

In criminal trials throughout the United States, whether here in Atlanta or elsewhere, the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause protects defendants from being convicted based on out-of-court statements by people who never show up to testify. The Confrontation Clause means what it says, our clients can “confront” the evidence against them and prosecutors should not be allowed to put up one person to say what some other person told him or her. However, the Supreme Court’s relatively recent decision in Michigan v. Bryant is a step backward and lets prosecutors get convictions even when the accuser never gets on the witness stand.

In Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), the Supreme Court ruled that the Confrontation Clause is violated when a prosecutor uses hearsay which is “testimonial,” the hearsay is admitted against a criminal defendant, and the hearsay declarant does not testify at the defendant’s trial. The Court in Crawford used various formulations of the term “testimonial.” Now, the most commonly adopted version defines a “testimonial” statement as one that “was made under circumstances which would lead an objectively reasonable declarant to believe or anticipate that the statement would be available for use against an accused at a later trial.” The Supreme Court later expanded upon this analysis in Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813 (2004), finding that “Statements are nontestimonial when made in the course of police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency. They are testimonial when the circumstances objectively indicate that there is no such ongoing emergency, and that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution.”

The basics facts in the recent Bryant case are that police found Anthony Covington in a gas station parking lot. Covington claimed he had been shot by Richard Bryant outside Bryant’s house. Covington’s story was that he had then driven himself to the parking lot. Covington died as a result of his wounds, and the prosecution introduced his statements concerning his shooting at Bryant’s murder trial.

August 17, 2010

Villarreal: Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Denies Speedy Trial Claim Where Ten Years Elapsed Between Indictment and Arrest

by Kish Law

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held last week that a ten-year delay between indictment and arrest did not deprive Victor Garcia Villarreal of his constitutional right to a speedy trial. The Court employed a four-factor balancing test, holding that although the length of the delay gave rise to a presumption of prejudice, the reason for the delay, failure to promptly assert the right, and lack of actual prejudice showed that Villarreal was not denied his right to a speedy trial. In weighing the final three factors, the Court gave substantial deference to the district court’s factual findings that Villarreal had evaded arrest and the delay had caused the government actual prejudice, rather than the defendant.

The full opinion in United States v. Villarreal is available here.

July 8, 2010

Cunningham: Eleventh Circuit Joins Other Courts of Appeals in Holding That Alleged Violations of Supervised Release Do Not Implicate Jury Trial and Evidentiary Standards as Applied by Apprendi and Blakely

by Kish Law

In late May, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears appeals from federal cases in Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, decided U.S. v. Cunningham. The Court held that the federal statute that provides for revocation of supervised release is constitutional under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, despite its provision for reimprisonment of a criminal defendant based upon conduct that is not proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

The supervised release revocation statute is at 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3). It permits a district court to “revoke a term of supervised release, and require the defendant to serve in prison all or part of the term of supervised release” upon a finding “by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant violated a condition of supervised release.”

In 2000, in Apprendi v. New Jersey, the Supreme Court held that, other than prior convictions, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. In 2004, the Supreme Court explained in Blakely v. Washington that the “statutory maximum” is the maximum sentence a judge may impose based upon the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant.