Court Won’t Hear Sentencing Confrontation Case

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to decide whether the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause applies during sentencing.

Defendant Sherman Lamont Fields had contended the right to confrontation should apply in sentencing hearings when capital punishment is an option, SCOTUSblog reports. The U.S. solicitor general had urged the court to decline the case on the ground that a split in the lower courts was not sufficiently developed to warrant review, SCOTUSblog reported in an earlier post.

Fields’ lawyers had argued in a cert petition (PDF posted by SCOTUSblog) that the Supreme Court’s 2004 confrontation clause opinion, Crawford v. Washington, should be extended to sentencing. Crawford limited the use of out-of-court testimonial evidence unless the defendant is permitted to cross-examine the person who made the statement.

The case is Fields v. United States.

Crawford is at issue in a different case accepted by the Supreme Court on Friday that asks whether statements made by a slain witness can be introduced against the man convicted of killing her.