Maryland v. Craig

In Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 (1990), the court upheld a Maryland statute which provided for the presentation of testimony via closed-circuit television in cases involving a child witness alleged to be the victim of child abuse. Under that statute, the closed-circuit television procedure could be used in cases where there had been a judicial determination that testimony by the child victim in the courtroom would result in the child suffering "serious emotional distress such that the child could not reasonably communicate". In upholding the Maryland statute, the court concluded that "where necessary to protect a child witness from trauma that would be caused by testifying in the physical presence of the defendant the federal Confrontation Clause does not prohibit use of a procedure that, despite the absence of face-to-face confrontation, ensures the reliability of the evidence by subjecting it to rigorous adversarial testing and thereby preserves the essence of the confrontation." Id., at 857. With regard to the particular case before it, the court found the evidence to be sufficiently reliable where the child witnesses testified under oath, were subject to full cross-examination, and were able to be observed by the judge, jury, and defendant as they testified. Id. at 857. To evaluate the sufficiency of a trial court's finding of necessity, the court established the following three-part test: First, the finding of necessity must be case-specific; that is, in each case, the trial court must hear evidence and determine whether use of the statutory procedure is necessary to protect the welfare of the particular child witness who seeks to testify. Id., at 855. Second, the trial court must find that the child witness would be traumatized, "not by the courtroom generally, but by the presence of the defendant." Id., at 856. And third, "the trial court must find that the emotional distress suffered by the child witness in the presence of the defendant is more than de minimis, i.e., more than 'mere nervousness or excitement or some reluctance to testify.'" Id. To determine whether R.C. 2945.482 is in violation of the federal Confrontation Clause, we look to the United States Supreme Court's analysis in Maryland v. Craig (1990), 497 U.S. 836, 110 S. Ct. 3157, 111 L. Ed. 2d 666. The Supreme Court was faced with a trial court decision that did make individualized findings and thus was required to decide the question reserved in Coy v. Iowa, whether exceptions exist. The Supreme Court concluded that the protection of a child witness from trauma was one public policy that may be sufficiently important, at least in some cases, to outweigh a defendant's right to face his or her accusers in court. Id. at 853, 110 S. Ct. at 3167, 111 L. Ed. 2d at 683. It stated: "Accordingly, we hold that, if the State makes an adequate showing of necessity, the state interest in protecting child witnesses from the trauma of testifying in a child abuse case is sufficiently important to justify the use of a special procedure that permits a child witness in such cases to testify at trial against a defendant in the absence of face-to-face confrontation with the defendant." Id. at 855, 110 S. Ct. at 3169, 111 L. Ed. 2d at 685. The Court affirmed "the importance of face-to-face confrontation with witnesses appearing at trial" but found that such confrontation was not "an indispensable element of the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of the right to confront one's accusers." Thus, even if appellant's right to confrontation is interpreted according to the relatively strict Sixth Amendment precedents, the lack of face-to-face confrontation does not mandate reversal. The testimony at the hearing in Craig was admissible if the denial of face-to-face confrontation was ": (1) necessary to further an important public policy and . . . (2) the reliability of the testimony was otherwise assured." Id. at 850.