Wednesday, March 10, 2004

New ruling on Confrontation Clause may bust up Gilmore and Church trial

On Monday, in Crawford v. Washington, the Supreme Court overruled a fairly recent precedent, concluding that the Confrontation Clause precluded the prosecution's use of recorded testimony from an earlier trial by an unavailable witness. For some comment on the case from one of the law professors cited in the opinion, see this page from the University of Michigan law school.

That ruling seems likely to cause a mistrial in the ongoing Church and Gilmore federal murder cases that have been on trial in Abingdon since February, according to this report ("Defense lawyers ask for mistrial in Pocahontas case," 3/10/04) in the Bristol paper.

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