N.C. Court of Appeals OKs Remote Two-Way Testimony for Ill Witnesses

I recently published a lengthy paper here examining the constitutionality of remote testimony in criminal trials under Crawford and the confrontation clause. In that paper I noted that the North Carolina Court of Appeals has held that Maryland v. Craig procedures for child victims survive Crawford. Maryland v. Craig was a pre-Crawford United States Supreme Court case that carved out an exception to the right to face-to-face confrontation at trial. In Craig the Court upheld a Maryland statute that allowed a judge to receive, through a one-way closed-circuit television system, the testimony of an alleged child abuse victim. Upholding the Maryland procedure, the Court reaffirmed the importance of face-to-face confrontation of witnesses appearing at trial but concluded that such confrontation was not an indispensable element of the right to confront one’s accusers. It held that while “the Confrontation Clause reflects a preference for face-to-face confrontation . . . that [preference] must occasionally give way to considerations of public policy and the necessities of the case.” It went on to explain that “a defendant’s right to confront accusatory witnesses may be satisfied absent a physical, face-to-face confrontation at trial only where denial of such confrontation is necessary to further an important public policy and only where the reliability of the testimony is otherwise assured.” As to the important public policy, the Court stated: “a State’s interest in the physical and psychological well-being of child abuse victims may be sufficiently important to outweigh, at least in some cases, a defendant’s right to face [...]