Hemphill v. New York
595 U. S. ____ (2022) (2022)
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Rule of Law:
A criminal defendant does not forfeit their Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses simply by presenting a defense that a trial judge deems misleading. The admission of unconfronted, testimonial hearsay to "correct" such a defense under a state's "opening the door" evidentiary rule violates the Confrontation Clause.
Facts:
- In April 2006, a stray 9-millimeter bullet from a street fight in the Bronx killed a two-year-old child.
- Eyewitnesses described the shooter as wearing a blue shirt or sweater.
- Police investigated Nicholas Morris and found a 9-millimeter cartridge and three .357-caliber bullets in his apartment.
- An associate, Ronnell Gilliam, initially identified Morris as the shooter but later recanted, claiming his cousin, Darrell Hemphill, was the shooter.
- The State charged Morris with murder but later offered him a plea deal to possession of a .357-magnum revolver, a different weapon than the one used in the killing, in exchange for dismissing the murder charge.
- Years later, police discovered that Darrell Hemphill's DNA matched a blue sweater recovered from Gilliam's apartment shortly after the crime.
Procedural Posture:
- The State of New York first indicted Nicholas Morris for murder in a state trial court, but that trial ended in a mistrial.
- The State subsequently dismissed the murder charges against Morris in exchange for his guilty plea to a lesser charge of weapon possession.
- Years later, the State of New York indicted Darrell Hemphill for the same murder in a state trial court.
- At trial, the court admitted portions of Morris's plea allocution into evidence over Hemphill's Sixth Amendment objection, ruling that Hemphill's defense had 'opened the door' to its admission.
- The jury convicted Hemphill of murder.
- Hemphill appealed his conviction to the New York Appellate Division, which affirmed the trial court's judgment.
- Hemphill then appealed to the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, which also affirmed the conviction.
- The U.S. Supreme Court granted Hemphill's petition for a writ of certiorari.
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Issue:
Does a state's 'opening the door' evidentiary rule, which allows the admission of unconfronted testimonial hearsay to correct a defendant's allegedly misleading defense, violate the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause?
Opinions:
Majority - Justice Sotomayor
Yes. The admission of the plea allocution under New York's 'opening the door' rule violated Hemphill's Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. The Confrontation Clause guarantees that the reliability of evidence is assessed through cross-examination, not by a trial judge's determination of whether unconfronted testimonial hearsay is reliable or necessary to correct a misleading impression. This Court's decision in Crawford v. Washington emphatically rejected such reliability-based approaches. The 'opening the door' rule is a substantive rule of evidence, not a procedural one, and it cannot create a new exception to the confrontation right that was not established at the time of the founding. The judge's role is to ensure the Constitution's procedures are followed, not to substitute a judicial assessment of reliability for the 'crucible of cross-examination'.
Concurring - Justice Alito
Yes. Assuming the plea allocution was testimonial, its admission violated the Confrontation Clause. A defendant can validly waive their confrontation right through conduct inconsistent with asserting that right, such as by failing to object or by being disruptive in court. However, introducing evidence that is misleading is not, in itself, an action inconsistent with the demand to confront a declarant whose out-of-court statements could correct the record. This situation is distinct from the rule of completeness, where a defendant's choice to introduce part of a statement by an unavailable declarant can be seen as an implicit waiver of the right to object to the admission of the remainder of that statement.
Dissenting - Justice Thomas
The Court should not answer the question because it lacks jurisdiction. Under 28 U.S.C. §1257(a), the Supreme Court may only review a federal claim that was properly presented to the state's highest court. Hemphill's arguments before the New York Court of Appeals focused on the misapplication of New York's state-law 'opening the door' rule, not on a direct constitutional challenge to the rule itself. Because the federal claim was not properly raised below, the Court is without jurisdiction to decide the case, and it should be dismissed.
Analysis:
This decision strongly reaffirms the core holding of Crawford v. Washington, cementing that the Confrontation Clause provides a procedural guarantee (the right to cross-examine) that cannot be overridden by a judge's substantive assessment of evidence's reliability or necessity. It clarifies that common state evidentiary doctrines like 'opening the door' cannot create new, unenumerated exceptions to this fundamental Sixth Amendment right. The ruling significantly curtails a prosecutor's ability to introduce otherwise inadmissible testimonial hearsay, forcing them to rebut a defendant's case with confronted testimony or other constitutionally permissible evidence, rather than leveraging the defendant's own defense strategy as a pretext for admission.
