By Adam Liptak
The Virginian-Pilot
WASHINGTON — A mortally wounded man’s identification of his assailant may be repeated by police officers in court, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The 6-2 decision was a significant retreat from the court’s recent embrace of the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause, which guarantees criminal defendants the right to confront witnesses against them.
Justice Antonin Scalia had been the leading proponent of a robust interpretation of the Confrontation Clause, and Monday’s decision drew a slashing dissent from him. He called the majority’s account of the facts of the case “so transparently false that professing to believe it demeans this institution.”
“In its vain attempt to make the incredible plausible,” he went on, “today’s opinion distorts our Confrontation Clause jurisprudence and leaves it in a shambles.”
The case arose from a predawn shooting in Detroit in 2001. The victim, Anthony Covington, was questioned by police officers in a gas station parking lot as he bled from a wound to his abdomen. He said he had been shot by Richard P. Bryant.
Covington died a few hours later. Police officers told the jury what he had said, and Bryant was convicted of murder.
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