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- Title
Confrontation After COVID.
- Authors
Zubair, Ayyan
- Abstract
The opportunity to face one’s accuser is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause. It is a historical right that the Romans afforded to Jesus’s disciples. And it is a right that may soon fall by the wayside in our new socially distant reality and beyond. In Maryland v. Craig, the United States Supreme Court established a two-step “necessity and reliability” test for allowing video testimony offered by child survivors of sexual abuse against their alleged abuser. As we inhabit an increasingly virtual world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, courts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and legal scholars are conflicted as to whether government witnesses in criminal trials should be permitted to testify by videoconference during the pandemic and thereafter. In this Note, I enter this debate by arguing that the Court, in light of its later decision in Crawford v. Washington, should abandon its reliability and public policy analyses in Craig. Instead, I recommend that the Court adopt what I call the “hierarchy of methods” approach, permitting video testimony only when securing in-court testimony or a Rule 15 deposition of an essential witness is infeasible.
- Subjects
COVID-19 pandemic; CIVIL rights; CONFRONTATION clause (Law); UNITED States. Constitution. 6th Amendment; CRAWFORD v. Washington
- Publication
California Law Review, 2022, Vol 110, Issue 5, p1689
- ISSN
0008-1221
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.15779/Z389P2W69R