The Supreme Court's latest criminal law decision is Kansas v. Ventris, available here. The basic holding is that a statement obtained in violation of a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel may be admitted for impeachment purposes, so long as the statement was voluntary. In brief, the defendant in Ventris was charged with murder and other offenses, and the police had a jailhouse informant ask him about the crimes. The defendant confessed, but because the informant deliberately elicited information, rather than serving as a mere listening post, the defendant's statements were obtained in violation of the Sixth Amendment, and the state did not introduce them in its case in chief. The defendant took the stand and testified that someone else committed the crimes, at which point, the state was allowed to introduce the defendant's statements for impeachment. Interestingly, the defendant was actually acquitted of the murder, but was convicted of other charges. Showing what some might see as a certain chutzpah, he appealed the lesser convictions, arguing that the state should not have been able to impeach him with his statements to the informant. The Kansas Supreme Court agreed, but the United States Supreme Court reversed. The majority concluded that barring the use of such statements for impeachment would not add much deterrent value to the sanction of excluding such statements from the prosecution's case in chief, and any incremental increase in deterrence was outweighed by the "need to prevent perjury and to assure the integrity of the trial process." The [...]
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