Coy v. Iowa (1988)
Coy v. Iowa (1988)
487 U.S. 1012
John Avery Coy was charged with sexually assaulting two 13-year-old girls as they camped out in the back yard of the house next to his. At his trial, pursuant to a 1985 Towa statute intended to protect child victims of sexual abuse, a screen was placed between him and the girls during their testimony. The screen blocked him from their sight but allowed him to see them dimly and to hear them. The trial court rejected his contention that the use of the screen violated the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. Coy was convicted, and the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari.
Opinion of the Court: Scalia, Brennan, Marshall, O’Connor, Stevens, White.
Concurring opinion: O’Connor, White.
Dissenting opinion: Blackmun, Rehnquist.
Not participating: Kennedy.
MR. JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellant was convicted of two counts of lascivious acts with a child after a jury trial in which a screen placed between him and the two complaining witnesses blocked him from their sight. Appellant contends that this procedure, authorized by state Statute, violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him.
Appellant objected strenuously to use of the screen, based first of all on his Sixth Amendment confrontation right. He argued that, although the device might succeed in its apparent aim of making the complaining witnesses feel less uneasy in giving their testimony, the Confrontation Clause directly addressed this issue by giving criminal defendants a right to face-to-face confrontation. He also argued that his right to due process was violated, since the procedure would make him appear guilty and thus erode the presumption of innocence. The trial court rejected both constitutional claims, though it instructed the jury to draw no inference of guilt from the screen.
The Sixth Amendment gives a criminal defendant the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” This language “comes to us on faded parchment,” with a lineage that traces back to the beginnings of Western legal culture. There are indications that a right of confrontation existed under Roman law. The Roman Governor Festus, discussing the proper treatment of his prisoner, Paul, stated: “It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man up to die before the accused has met his accusers face to face, and has been given a chance to defend himself against the charges.” Acts 25:16. It has been argued that a form of the right of confrontation was recognized in England well before the right to jury trial.
Most of this Court’s encounters with the Confrontation Clause have involved either the admissibility of out-of-court statements or restrictions on the scope of cross-examination. The reason for that is not, as the State suggests, that these elements are the essence of the Clause’s protection—but rather, quite to the contrary, that there is at least some room for doubt (and hence litigation) as to the extent to which the Clause includes those elements, whereas, as Justice Harlan put it, “[s]imply as a matter of English” it confers at least “a right to meet face to face all those who appear and give evidence at trial.” California v. Green (1970). Simply as a matter of Latin as well, since the word “confront” ultimately derives from the prefix “con-” (from “contra” meaning “against” or “opposed”) and the noun “frons” (forehead). Shakespeare was thus describing the root meaning of confrontation when he had Richard the Second say: “Then call them to our presence—face to face, and frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear the accuser and the accused freely speak.…” Richard II, act 1, sc. 1.
We have never doubted, therefore, that the Confrontation Clause guarantees the defendant a face-to-face meeting with witnesses appearing before the trier of fact.…
More recently, we have described the “literal right to ‘confront’ the witness at the time of trial” as forming “the core of the values furthered by the Confrontation Clause.” California v. Green.
The Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of face-to-face encounter between witness and accused serves ends related both to appearances and to reality. This opinion is embellished with references to and quotations from antiquity in part to convey that there is something deep in human nature that regards face-to-face confrontation between accused and accuser as “essential to a fair trial in a criminal prosecution.” What was true of old is no less true in modern times. President Eisenhower once described face-to-face confrontation as part of the code of his home town of Abilene, Kansas. In Abilene, he said, it was necessary to “[m]eet anyone face to face with whom you disagree. You could not sneak up on him from behind, or do any damage to him, without suffering the penalty of an outraged citizenry.… In this country, if someone dislikes you, or accuses you, he must come up in front. He cannot hide behind the shadow.” The phrase persists, “Look me in the eye and say that.” Given these human feelings of what is necessary for fairness, the right of confrontation “contributes to the establishment of a system of criminal justice in which the perception as well as the reality of fairness prevails.”
The perception that confrontation is essential to fairness has persisted over the centuries because there is much truth to it. A witness “may feel quite differently when he has to repeat his story looking at the man whom he will harm greatly by distorting or mistaking the facts. It is always more difficult to tell a lie about a person ‘to his face’ than ‘behind his back.’” In the former context, even if the lie is told, it will often be told less convincingly. The Confrontation Clause does not, of course, compel the witness to fix his eyes upon the defendant; he may studiously look elsewhere, but the trier of fact will draw its own conclusions. The State can hardly gainsay the profound effect upon a witness of standing in the presence of the person the witness accuses, since that is the very phenomenon it relies upon to establish the potential “trauma” that allegedly justified the extraordinary procedure in the present case. That face-to-face presence may, unfortunately, upset the truthful rape victim or abused child; but by the same token it may confound and undo the false accuser, or reveal the child coached by a malevolent adult. It is a truism that constitutional protections have costs.
The remaining question is whether the right to confrontation was in fact violated in this case. The screen at issue was specifically designed to enable the complaining witnesses to avoid viewing appellant as they gave their testimony, and the record indicates that it was successful in this objective. It is difficult to imagine a more obvious or damaging violation of the defendant’s right to a face-to-face encounter.
The State suggests that the confrontation interest at stake here was outweighed by the necessity of protecting victims of sexual abuse. It is true that we have in the past indicated that rights conferred by the Confrontation Clause are not absolute, and may give way to other important interests. The rights referred to in those cases, however, were not the right narrowly and explicitly set forth in the Clause, but rather rights that are, or were asserted to be, reasonably implicit—namely, the right to cross-examine, the right to exclude out-of-court statements, and the asserted right to face-to-face confrontation at some point in the proceedings other than the trial itself. To hold that our determination of what implications are reasonable must take into account other important interests is not the same as holding that we can identify exceptions, in light of other important interests, to the irreducible literal meaning of the clause: “a right to meet face to face all those who appear and give evidence at trial.” We leave for another day, however, the question whether any exceptions exist. Whatever they may be, they would surely be allowed only when necessary to further an important public policy. The State maintains that such necessity is established here by the statute, which creates a legislatively imposed presumption of trauma. Our cases suggest, however, that even as to exceptions from the normal implications of the Confrontation Clause, as opposed to its most literal application, something more than the type of generalized finding underlying such a statute is needed when the exception is not “firmly…rooted in our jurisprudence.” The exception created by the Iowa statute, which was passed in 1985, could hardly be viewed as firmly rooted. Since there have been no individualized findings that these particular witnesses needed special protection, the judgment here could not be sustained by any conceivable exception.
The State also briefly suggests that any Confrontation Clause error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under the standard of Chapman V. California (1967). We have recognized that other types of violations of the Confrontation Clause are subject to that harmless error analysis, and see no reason why denial of face-to-face confrontation should not be treated the same. An assessment of harmlessness cannot include consideration of whether the witness’s testimony would have been unchanged, or the jury’s assessment unaltered, had there been confrontation; such an inquiry would obviously involve pure speculation, and harmlessness must therefore be determined on the basis of the remaining evidence. The Iowa Supreme Court had no occasion to address the harmlessness issue, since it found no constitutional violation. In the circumstances of this case, rather than decide whether the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, we leave the issue for the court below.
MRS. JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom MR. JUSTICE WHITE joins, concurring.
I agree with the Court that appellant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause were violated in this case. I write separately only to note my view that those rights are not absolute but rather may give way in an appropriate case to other competing interests so as to permit the use of certain procedural devices designed to shield a child witness from the trauma of courtroom testimony.
Child abuse is a problem of disturbing proportions in today’s society.… Many States have determined that a child victim may suffer trauma from exposure to the harsh atmosphere of the typical courtroom and have undertaken to shield the child through a variety of ameliorative measures. We deal today with the constitutional ramifications of only one such measure, but we do so against a broader backdrop. Iowa appears to be the only State authorizing the type of screen used in this case. A full half of the States, however, have authorized the use of one- or two-way closed-circuit television. Statutes sanctioning one-way systems generally permit the child to testify in a separate room in which only the judge, counsel, technicians, and in some cases the defendant, are present. The child’s testimony is broadcast into the courtroom for viewing by the jury. Two-way systems permit the child witness to see the courtroom and the defendant over a video monitor. In addition to such closed-circuit television procedures, 33 States (including 19 of the 25 authorizing closed-circuit television) permit the use of videotaped testimony, which typically is taken in the defendant’s presence.
While I agree with the Court that the Confrontation Clause was violated in this case, I wish to make clear that nothing in today’s decision necessarily dooms such efforts by state legislatures to protect child witnesses.
Thus, I would permit use of a particular trial procedure that called for something other than face-to-face confrontation if that procedure was necessary to further an important public policy. The protection of child witnesses is, in my view and in the view of a substantial majority of the States, just such a policy. The primary focus therefore likely will be on the necessity prong. I agree with the Court that more than the type of generalized legislative finding of necessity present here is required. But if a court makes a case-specific finding of necessity, as is required by a number of State statutes, our cases suggest that the strictures of the Confrontation Clause may give way to the compelling state interest of protecting child witnesses. Because nothing in the Court’s opinion conflicts with this approach and this conclusion, I join it.
MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, with whom the CHIEF JUSTICE joins, dissenting.
I find it necessary to discuss my disagreement with the Court for two reasons. First, the minimal extent of the infringement on appellant’s Confrontation Clause interests is relevant in considering whether competing public policies justify the procedures employed in this case. Second, I fear that the Court’s apparent fascination with the witness’ ability to see the defendant will lead the States that are attempting to adopt innovations to facilitate the testimony of child-victims of sex abuse to sacrifice other, more central, confrontation interests, such as the right to cross-examination or to have the trier of fact observe the testifying witness.…
Whether or not “there is something deep in human nature” that considers critical the ability of a witness to see the defendant while the witness is testifying, that was not a part of the common law’s view of the confrontation requirement. “There never was at common law any recognized right to an indispensable thing called confrontation as distinguished from cross- examination.” (emphasis in original). 5 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1397, p. 158 (J. Chadbourn rev. 1974). I find Dean Wigmore’s statement infinitely more per- suasive than President Eisenhower’s recollection of Kansas justice, or the words Shakespeare placed in the mouth of his Richard II concerning the best means of ascertaining the truth.… In fact, Wigmore considered it clear that the right of confrontation is provided “not for the idle purpose of gazing upon the witness, or of being gazed upon by him,” but, rather, to allow for cross-examination (emphasis added).…
Indisputably, the state interests behind the Iowa statute are of considerable importance. Between 1976 and 1985, the number of reported incidents of child maltreatment in the United States rose from .67 million to over 1.9 million, with an estimated 11.7 percent of those cases in 1985 involving allegations of sexual abuse. The prosecution of these child sex-abuse cases poses substantial difficulties because of the emotional trauma frequently suffered by child witnesses who must testify about the sexual assaults they have suffered.
The fear and trauma associated with a child’s testimony in front of the defendant has two serious identifiable consequences: It may cause psychological injury to the child, and it may so overwhelm the child as to prevent the possibility of effective testimony, thereby undermining the truth-finding function of the trial itself. Because of these effects, a State properly may consider the protection of child witnesses to be an important public policy. In my view, this important public policy, embodied in the Iowa statute that authorized the use of the screening device, outweighs the narrow Confrontation Clause right at issue here—the “preference” for having the defendant within the witness’ sight while the witness testifies.