Crawford v. Washington

This case concerns the proper scope of the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which provides defendants with the right to confront the witnesses against them in criminal cases. The ACLU brief asks the Court to reconsider its current approach in this area and hold that a defendant’s right to cross-examine witnesses against him bars the prosecution from relying at trial on out-of-court statements from still-available witnesses that were elicited for testimonial purposes. The statements at issue were made by a Washington woman, Sylvia Crawford, who was barred by the marital privilege from testifying against her husband in a murder trial.