As the justice system becomes increasingly reliant on remote technology to cope with a backlog of cases during the coronavirus pandemic, an overturned statutory rape conviction in Missouri, where the state supreme court found that an investigator’s video testimony violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him, is raising new questions about video testimony in criminal court cases nationwide, reports the Associated Press.
The decision could eventually make this a test case
for the U.S. Supreme Court, which has grappled with the legal ramifications of
remote testimony for decades, but has yet to reach a sound conclusion on
a question that could mean yet more challenges for an already
overburdened judiciary, according to The Crime Report.
In Maryland v. Craig in
1990, the court upheld a trial judge’s decision to let a victim of child abuse testify
remotely, saying the Sixth Amendment doesn’t guarantee an “absolute right” to
in-person confrontations, especially if remote testimony “is necessary to
further an important public policy.”
The dissenters said the Constitution provided no
wiggle room and that the point was “to place the witness under the sometimes
hostile glare of the defendant,” and were in the majority 14 years later
in Crawford v.
Washington, which asserted that the right to confront an accuser in
person was near-to-absolute.
Research has raised serious questions about the
widely held idea that people can gauge trustworthiness better in person and in
many pandemic-era proceedings defendants have agreed to waive their Sixth Amendment
rights so trials can go forward.
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