Shaakirrah R. Sanders is the first Black, African American to achieve the rank of professor of law at the University of Idaho and its College of Law. She teaches Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, and the First Amendment. Her scholarship focuses on the First, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments.
Thursday’s decision in Hemphill v. New York affirmed the requirement for cross-examination of testimonial statements offered at trial and stiff-armed a state-law exception to the rule.
The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a criminal defendant who said his Sixth Amendment rights were violated at a trial during which he was convicted of fatally shooting a two-year-old boy. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the opinion for an 8-1 court. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.
Tuesday’s oral argument in Hemphill v. New York made apparent that a New York evidentiary rule, known as the “door opening” rule, implicates the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause.
The Supreme Court will hear argument on Tuesday in an important case on the rights of criminal defendants under the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause.