Del Vecchio v. Ill. Dep't of Corr

In Del Vecchio v. Ill. Dep't of Corr., 31 F.3d 1363, 1387 (7th Cir.1994), the court was faced with a capital defendant's challenge, on Confrontation Clause grounds, to the in-court testimony of two psychiatrists "that they had perused medical reports from other psychiatrists who had examined Del Vecchio, and that the conclusions reached in those reports supported their opinions" that the defendant was a sociopath. The court held that Illinois's statute permitting the admission of such hearsay at capital sentencing adequately protected the defendant's constitutional rights by "providing that defendants `shall be given a fair opportunity to rebut any information received at the hearing.'" Id. at 1388. The defendant had in fact been given that opportunity, because "he had access to the contested hearsay reports; he could have cross-examined Drs. Rogers and Cavanaugh about the reports; he could have called his own experts." Id.