Smith v. State

ROBERTS, J.,

for the Court.

SUMMARY OF THE CASE

¶ 1. This appeal requires an analysis of the consequences of a violation of the Confrontation Clause as discussed in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004). Our precise analysis involves circumstances in which: (1) the victim was physically present at trial; (2) on direct examination during the prosecution’s case-in-chief, the victim claimed a loss of memory; (3) the trial court determined the victim was therefore “unavailable” due to that alleged loss of memory; (4) the trial court found that the “unavailable”…