When is a New Rule Applicable on Collateral Review?
Bockting’s stepdaughter, Autumn, who was 6 years old, told her mother that Bockting sexually assaulted her. Autumn spoke to a rape counselor and recreated the acts with anatomically correct dolls. When Autumn was too distressed to be sworn at trial the State moved to allow her mother and a detective to recount her statements.
When this case last reached the Supreme Court the controlling precedent on the constitutionality of these sorts of laws, in light of the Confrontation Clause, was Ohio v. Roberts, which held that the constitution allowed such evidence if the statement bore sufficient indicia of reliability, either because the statement fell within a firmly rooted hearsay exception, or because there were particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.” After Bockting’s case was decided on these grounds, and as his habeas case was pending, the Court overruled Roberts, in Crawford, deciding that “[t]estimonial statements of witnesses absent from trial” are admissible “only where the declarant is unavailable and only where the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine [the witness].” Specifically, in that case, the Court found that the Confrontation Clause did not make a judgment on the desirability of reliable evidence, but on how the reliability of that evidence would be tested; cross-examination.
The Crawford rule would not have admitted Autumn’s statements. Under Teague v. Lane if the Crawford rule was in existence at the time of his conviction, or a “watershed” rule that implicated fundamental fairness, it should be applied to cases on collateral review. New rules only apply to cases on direct review. The Crawford rule was clearly a “new rule,” one that was not “dictated” by precedent existing at the time; though the
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home