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The Bill of Rights, 2nd Edition

Michigan v. Bryant

by Thomas Tandy Lewis

Citation: 562 U.S. 344

Announced: February 28, 2011

Issues: Admissibility of out-or-court statements in a criminal trial; Right of confrontation

Relevant Amendments: Sixth and Fourteenth

Brief Summary: The Supreme Court allowed a murder victim’s statement identifying the murderer to be admitted as evidence in the criminal trial. Since the statement was made to the police to assist in an ongoing emergency, the Court concluded that it was not testimonial hearsay; therefore, the admissibility of the statement did not violate the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. The resulting test draws a distinction between statements made to authorities for the purpose of prosecution versus statements made to the police as part of an ongoing investigation.

When Detroit police found Anthony Covington critically wounded at a gas station, he said that Richard Perry Bryant had shot him outside of Bryant’s home. Covington died soon thereafter. During Bryant’s trial for murder, the police testified about Covington’s accusation, which was a significant part of the prosecution’s case. The jury found Bryant of second-degree murder. Appealing the verdict, Bryant’s lawyers argued that the U.S. Supreme Court in Crawford v. Washington (2004) had held unanimously that out-of-court statements, without the possibility of cross-examination, violated the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. Based largely on this precedent, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed Bryant’s conviction and ordered a new trial. The judges reasoned that the victim’s stamen, made as part of an investigation of a past event, was “testimonial” for purposes of the Sixth Amendment. Without the opportunity for cross-examination, it was hearsay and inadmissible in a criminal trial.

In a 6-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded the decision by Michigan’s high court. In the opinion for the majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the police officer’s questioning of Covington about the shooter and the location of the event did not have the primary purpose of gathering evidence for purposes of a criminal prosecution. Rather the primarily purpose of the interrogation was to gather information about an ongoing emergency. They had no way of knowing whether a homosocial maniac might be on the loose. Sotomayor quoted an earlier opinion: “Statements are nontestimonial when made in the course of police interrogation under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency. They are testimonial when the circumstances objectively indicate that there is no such ongoing emergency, and that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution.” Based on this distinction, Sotomayor concluded that the statements at Bryant’s trial did not violate the Confrontation Clause.

Although basing the decision primarily on the theory of an ongoing investigation, Sotomayor suggested that the reliability could also be considered in deciding on the admissibility of out-of-court statements. In a favorable reference to Ohio v. Roberts (1980), which had been largely rejected in Crawford, she wrote: “We held that reliability can be established if ‘the evidence falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception,’ or if it does not fall within such an exception, then if it bears ‘particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.’”

In a spirited dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia, who had written the opinion in Crawford, presented a strong defense of originalism in regard to the Confrontation ClauseMi. He complained: “But today’s decision is not only a gross distortion of the facts. It is a gross distortion of the law—a revisionist narrative in which reliability continues to guide our Confrontation Clause jurisprudence, at least where emergencies and faux emergencies are concerned.” Accusing the majority of resurrecting Roberts, he warned against the subjective implications of Sotomayor’s opinion: “The Court recedes from Crawford in a second significant way. It requires judges to conduct ‘open-ended balancing tests’ and ‘amorphous, if not entirely subjective,’ inquiries into the totality of the circumstances bearing upon reliability.’” In Scalia’s opinion, the majority’s decision “distorts our Confrontation Clause jurisprudence and leaves it in a shambles. Instead of clarifying the law, the Court makes itself the obfuscator of last resort.” Scalia was probably guilty of hyperbole in much of his dissent, but he was probably correct in asserting that Bryant “creates an expansive exception to the Confrontation Clause for violent crimes.”

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Lewis, Thomas Tandy. "Michigan V. Bryant." The Bill of Rights, 2nd Edition, edited by Thomas Tandy Lewis, Salem Press, 2017. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=BOR2e_0385.
APA 7th
Lewis, T. T. (2017). Michigan v. Bryant. In T. T. Lewis (Ed.), The Bill of Rights, 2nd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Lewis, Thomas Tandy. "Michigan V. Bryant." Edited by Thomas Tandy Lewis. The Bill of Rights, 2nd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2017. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.