William Rehnquist

“ The United States contends that petitioner's Confrontation Clause claim should be rejected because the Confrontation Clause's limited purpose is to prevent a particular abuse common in 16th and 17th century England: prosecuting a defendant through the presentation of ex parte affidavits, without the affiants ever being produced at trial. Because S.G.'s out-of-court statements do not fit this description, the United States suggests that S.G. was not a "witness against" petitioner within the meaning of the Clause. ”

“ Second, we observed that there is little benefit, if any, to be accomplished by imposing an "unavailability rule." [6] Such a rule will not work to bar absolutely the introduction of the out-of-court statements; if the declarant either is unavailable, or is available and produced for trial, the statements can be introduced. Id., at 396, 106 S.Ct., at 1126-1127. Nor is an unavailability rule likely to produce much testimony that adds meaningfully to the trial's truth-determining process. ”

“ And while an unavailability rule would therefore do little to improve the accuracy of factfinding, it is likely to impose substantial additional burdens on the factfinding process. The prosecution would be required to repeatedly locate and keep continuously available each declarant, even when neither the prosecution nor the defense has any interest in calling the witness to the stand. ”

“ And as we have also noted, a statement that qualifies for admission under a "firmly rooted" hearsay exception is so trustworthy that adversarial testing can be expected to add little to its reliability. Wright, 497 U.S., at ----, 110 S.Ct., at 3149. Given the evidentiary value of such statements, their reliability, and that establishing a generally applicable unavailability rule would have few practical benefits while imposing pointless litigation costs, we see no reason to treat the out-of-court statements in this case differently from those we found admissible in Inadi. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the two exceptions we consider in this case are "firmly rooted." The exception for spontaneous declarations is at least two centuries old, see 6 J. Wigmore, Evidence, § 1747, 195 (J. Chadbourn rev. 1976) , and may date to the late 17th century. ”