U.S. Supreme Court overturns Michigan high court

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned a ruling by the Michigan Supreme Court that had granted a new trial to a man convicted of second-degree murder in 2001. You can read the full ruling here.

Police officers testified in the trial of Richard Bryant that the defendant had been identified by the victim, Anthony Covington, who subsequently died. Bryant was convicted by a jury but appealed, arguing that the second-hand testimony of the victim was inadmissible because the constitution says that defendants have the right to confront the witnesses against them — and since Covington was dead, that was not possible.

The Michigan Supreme Court ultimately agreed with Bryant and ordered a new trial. Prosecutors then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned that ruling in one of the most unusual lineups imaginable. The makeups of the majority and minority cut across all ideological lines.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate concurring opinion. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissent, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Elena Kagan did not participate in the ruling.

The court ruled that the testimony was not inadmissible because it was not offered to police for the purpose of use at trial but was offered to assist them in an “ongoing emergency” to arrest the suspect, who might have been seeking other victims.

Covington’s identification and description of the shooter and the location of the shooting were not testimonial statements because they had a “primary purpose . . . to enable police assistance to meet an on-going emergency.” Therefore, their admission at Bryant’s trial did not violate the Confrontation Clause.

Justice Scalia responded with his usual outspokenness:

Today’s tale — a story of five officers conducting successive examinations of a dying man with the primary purpose, not of obtaining and preserving his testimony regarding his killer, but of protecting him, them, and others from a murderer somewhere on the loose — is so transparently false that professing to believe it demeans this institution. But reaching a patently incorrect conclusion on the facts is a relatively benign judicial mischief; it affects, after all, only the case at hand. In its vain attempt to make the incredible plausible, however — or perhaps as an intended second goal — today’s opinion distorts our Confrontation Clause jurisprudence and leaves it in a shambles. Instead of clarifying the law, the Court makes itself the obfuscator of last resort.