Re: Giles v. California: I'm confused.
boomerang wrote: Quote:Giles v. California
This case is based on an appeal brought by Dwayne Giles, a Californian who was convicted of shooting and killing his former girlfriend, Brenda Avie. Several weeks before the murder, Avie told police that Giles was threatening to kill her.
The California Supreme Court had upheld a lower court decision to allow a police officer to testify about Avie's report of Giles' threats, even though Avie was not under oath when she spoke to the officer. Her unsworn allegation, delivered second-hand, would not be admissible if she was alive, because Giles has the right to face Avie in court to challenge her claims. But California's Supreme Court ruled that the fact that she was murdered justified an exception to the defendant's right to confront and cross-examine her in court.
The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed. In the six to three ruling, the Justices said that Avie's second-hand testimony was not admissible because the Sixth Amendment's "Confrontation Clause" gave Giles the right to challenge Avie's accusations. While calling domestic violence "an intolerable offense," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority that "the accused shall enjoy the rightÂ…to be confronted with the witnesses against him." He wrote that her death does not justify "abridging the rights of criminal defendants."
In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said the Court should have ruled that defendants forfeit their constitutional right to confront witnesses when they are responsible for the witness' absence from trial. The ruling, Breyer wrote, "grants the defendant not fair treatment, but a windfall."
"We have real concern that today's U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Giles v. California will make it less likely that victims of domestic violence will seek help from police, and more difficult for them to get justice from the courts," said Family Violence Prevention Fund President Esta Soler. "We recognize the need to protect the rights of the accused, but there is also an urgent imperative to make it possible for prosecutions to succeed when victims have been murdered and thus cannot testify - and be cross-examined - in court. There seems to be strong evidence that Dwayne Giles murdered Brenda Avie, shooting her six times even as she tried to get away. We hope that the evidence that will be admissible at re-trial will be enough to convict him once again - and that today's Supreme Court ruling will not have a chilling effect on efforts to stop domestic violence and protect victims."
To read the ruling, visit
www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-6053.pdf.
Wouldn't the "accuser" have been the state of California?
Nope. The accuser is the person that accused him of making the threat - the ex-g/f. She made the comments to the police officer accusing him of threatening to kill her. (The state is the accuser on the larger issue of whether or not he murdered her...)
Quote:Does this mean that police reports won't be acceptable evidence if the person who files the report is killed before the report is investigated?
Whether the report is
investigated or not doesn't matter much. The issue in this case was that the there was a verbal statement made to a police officer but that verbal statement was never written down and signed to. Nor was the person who gave the statement (the ex-g/f) under oath when she made the verbal statement.
Imagine me and you sitting in a room. While there I recite every name in the pohone book with the statement "...threatened to kill me." i.e. Andrew Adams threatened to kill me. Anthony Adams threatened to kill me. Annette Adams threatened to kill me." 3 Weeks later I end up murdered. No matter who the cops arrested and the prosecutors charge for my murder you could get on the stand and testify that I had told you 3 weeks earlier that that person was going to kill me. But whoever is accused would have no way of questioning me as to the nature of the threat for the jury to determine whether there was any actual threat of not. All the jury would hear is your testimony that I stated that I had been threatened. If you neglected to tell them that I had said the same thing about thousands of other people they'd have no way of knowing that I recited every name in the phone book in the same way. That would be very prejudicial testimony.
Quote:What reprecussions might come from this decision?
Few, if any IMO. The case would never have been appealed on this issue if there had been a sworn verbal or a written/signed statement. And it doesn't negate the "dying utterance" rule in any way either. There won't be any cases where this ruling will apply.
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