# Barber v. Page

> Supreme Court of the United States · April 29, 1968 · 390 U.S. 719

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423674

## Case

- **Full name:** Barber v. Page, Warden
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** April 29, 1968
- **Citations:** 390 U.S. 719; 88 S. Ct. 1318; 20 L. Ed. 2d 255; 1968 U.S. LEXIS 1877
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Harlan
- **Judges:** Marshall, Harlan
- **Cited by:** 1,535 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Reported overruled on other grounds by Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) — not on the Supreme Court's list.
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 4
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423674

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that, unlike cross-examination outside of trial, the presence of the witness at trial compels the witness “to stand face to face with the jury in order that they may look at him, and judge by his demeanor upon the stand and the manner in which he gives his testimony…
- holding that Barber's failure to cross-examine a witness at a preliminary hearing did not constitute a waiver of his right to confrontation because Barber could not have anticipated that the witness would be unavailable to testify at trial
- holding that the prosecution failed to make a good faith effort to procure a witness for trial where it made no effort to avail itself of either a statutory provision or agency rule allowing for federal prisoners to testify in state courts
- holding that admission 12 of prior testimony violated the Confrontation Clause because the state did not prove the witness was unavailable irrespective of 13 whether the witness was cross-examined during prior testimony
- finding a Confrontation Clause violation where "the state made absolutely no effort to obtain the presence of [the witness] at trial other than to ascertain that he was in a federal prison” outside the state

## Opinion text

MR. Justice Harlan,
concurring.
I agree that the State’s failure to attempt to obtain the presence of the witness denied petitioner due process, and I therefore concur in the opinion of the Court on the premises of my opinion in Pointer v. Texas, 380 U. S. 400, 408 .

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423674. Public record. Not legal advice.