Child's statements to teachers were admissible in trial of alleged abuser, Supreme Court says
There was no confrontation clause violation when prosecutors introduced evidence of a 3-year-old boy’s statements to his teachers identifying the person who left red marks on his body, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.
The statements made by “L.P.” to his preschool teachers were not made with the primary purpose of creating evidence for prosecution, the court said in an opinion (PDF) that was unanimous in the judgment. As a result, their introduction at trial didn’t violate the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause.
The statements were used in the prosecution of Darius Clark of Cleveland, Ohio, who was caring for L.P. and another child so his girlfriend could travel to Washington, D.C., to work as a prostitute. Clark’s nickname was “Dee.” Preschool teachers questioned L.P. after noticing one eye appeared bloodshot and “marks like whips of some sort” on L.P.’s face. L.P. told his teachers that “Dee, Dee” did it.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the opinion for the court, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Three other justices concurred in the judgment.
The teachers questioned L.P. because they needed to know whether it was safe to release the boy to his guardian at the end of the day, Alito said. There was no indication that the conversation was intended to gather evidence for prosecution.
Alito added that L.P.’s young age “fortifies our conclusion that the statements in question were not testimonial. Statements by very young children will rarely, if ever, implicate the confrontation clause.”
Justice Antonin Scalia concurred in the judgment in an opinion joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Scalia said Alito’s opinion had wrongly described the Supreme Court’s 2004 confrontation clause decision, Crawford v. Washington, as “adopt[ing] a different approach.”
According to Scalia, Crawford “sought to bring our application of the confrontation clause back to its original meaning” and it shouldn’t be described as though it were “only a matter of twiddle-dum twiddle-dee preference” between Crawford and the old approach.
In another concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas said he would have used a different test to reach the court’s result.
The case is Ohio v. Clark.
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