{"id":827,"date":"2021-04-06T22:56:34","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T02:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/in-print\/safeguarding-the-opportunity-for-effective-cross-examination-the-confrontation-clause-and-pretrial-disclosures\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:09:32","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:09:32","slug":"safeguarding-the-opportunity-for-effective-cross-examination-the-confrontation-clause-and-pretrial-disclosures","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/in-print\/volume-58-number-2-spring-2021\/safeguarding-the-opportunity-for-effective-cross-examination-the-confrontation-clause-and-pretrial-disclosures\/","title":{"rendered":"Safeguarding the Opportunity for Effective Cross-Examination: The Confrontation Clause and Pretrial Disclosures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>The Sixth Amendment\u2019s Confrontation Clause provides criminal defendants \u201can opportunity for effective cross-examination\u201d at trial. Defendants\u2014usually through their attorneys\u2014must be able to question adverse witnesses in person. But the mere opportunity to ask questions might not be sufficient for the defendant to ascertain favorable information from the witness or discredit the witness. And other criminal-procedure doctrines like the rule of Brady v. Maryland may not provide the defendant with all the beneficial information he needs from a witness to make his case to the jury.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In <em>Pennsylvania v. Ritchie<\/em>, a 1987 Supreme Court case, a plurality of Justices interpreted the Confrontation Clause to apply during trial only. But Justice Brennan, joined by Justice Marshall, dissented and contended that the Confrontation Clause should apply to events before trial, not just to cross-examination during trial. In their view, the Confrontation Clause should have provided the Ritchie defendant access to some \u201cmaterial information\u201d from a testifying witness pretrial in order to effectively cross-examine that witness. This Note argues that Justices Brennan and Marshall were correct\u2014criminal defendants should be able to assert their Confrontation Clause right to seek access to some pretrial information from testifying witnesses. Trial judges could then review the requested information in camera to ensure that revealing it to the defendant would not violate the witness\u2019s privilege. In this way, interpreting the Confrontation Clause to apply before trial (as well as during trial) would provide criminal defendants with a fully effective opportunity to cross-examine witnesses while safeguarding witness privilege and the government\u2019s interest in maintaining witness privacy.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2021\/04\/58-2-ONeill-Safeguarding-the-Opportunity-for-Effective-Cross-Examination.pdf\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0The Sixth Amendment\u2019s Confrontation Clause provides criminal defendants \u201can opportunity for effective cross-examination\u201d at trial. Defendants\u2014usually through their attorneys\u2014must be able to question adverse witnesses in person. But the mere [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2240,"featured_media":0,"parent":907,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-827","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2240"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":854,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/827\/revisions\/854"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}