N.C. App. Holds that Maryland v. Craig Survives Crawford

In a case decided earlier this month, the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that Maryland v. Craig, which allows certain child abuse victims to testify by way of closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems, survives Crawford. Crawford, of course, is the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2004 decision radically revamping confrontation clause analysis. As a general rule, the confrontation clause protects the right to face-to-face confrontation. This is understood to mean that the witness testifies live at trial in a setting in which the defendant and the witness can see and hear each other. In Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 (1990), however, the United States Supreme Court carved out an exception to the right to face-to-face confrontation. In Craig, the Court upheld a Maryland statute allowing a judge to receive, through a one-way CCTV system, testimony from an alleged child abuse victim. 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 confrontation right. 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.” Id. at 849 (quotation and citation omitted). It went on to explain that the confrontation right “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.” [...]