Domestic Violence Cases Confront the Constitution
For prosecutors of domestic violence cases, one of the biggest frustrations has been the frequency with which women refuse to testify against their abusers. Until 2004, prosecutors were often able to convict perpetrators of domestic violence even when women refused to testify by offering into evidence the women's post-abuse descriptions of attacks to police officers. Even though these statements to police officers were hearsay, they were admissible as evidence so long as judges deemed them to be sufficiently reliable.
The case of Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, made it almost impossible for prosecutors to convict domestic violence perpetrators based on women's hearsay descriptions of abuse. Interpreting the "Confrontation Clause" of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Crawford decided that if hearsay statements are "testimonial" (as statements to police officers almost always are), they are inadmissible in evidence unless defendants have the opportunity to cross-examine the women who made them in court. Thus, in most cases in which abused women refuse to cooperate with prosecutors, charges against alleged perpetrators of domestic violence must be dismissed.
Crawford and later cases suggested one possible route making women's hearsay descriptions to police officers admissible as evidence: If a prosecutor can show that a perpetrator's intimidating behavior (such as physical abuse, threats, etc.) resulted in the woman refusing to testify, then the perpetrator could be held to have forfeited his right to cross examine. If forfeiture occurs, the woman's hearsay description of the perpetrator's abuse is admissible in evidence even if the woman fails to testify, and the perpetrator might be convicted based on the hearsay.
To the dismay of domestic violence prosecutors, in the 2008 case of Giles v. California, 554 U.S. ___, the U.S. Supreme Court made it more difficult to prove that domestic violence perpetrators forfeited their right to cross-examine. According to Giles, intimidating behavior constitutes forfeiture only if the perpetrator carried it out for the purpose of preventing a person from testifying.
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