# Lilly v. Virginia

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 14, 1999 · 527 U.S. 116

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9433829

## Case

- **Full name:** Lilly v. Virginia
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 14, 1999
- **Citations:** 527 U.S. 116; 119 S. Ct. 1887; 144 L. Ed. 2d 117; 1999 U.S. LEXIS 4006
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Scalia
- **Judges:** Stevens, Scalia, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy
- **Cited by:** 1,046 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Reported abrogated by Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) — not on the Supreme Court's list.
- Negative treatments: 3
- Distinguished by: 3
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9433829

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating that appellate courts defer to trial court determinations of whether evidence is admissible under hearsay rules, but when that evidence is objected to as violative of the Confrontation Clause, " 'independent review is ... necessary ... to maintain control of, and to cl…
- explaining that "[i]ndependent review is ... necessary" for "fact-intensive, mixed questions of constitutional law" in order "to maintain control of, and to clarify, the legal principles governing the factual circumstances necessary to satisfy the protections of the Bill of Ri…
- explaining that “[independent review is ... necessary” for “fact-intensive, mixed questions of constitutional law” in order “to maintain control of, and to clarify, the legal principles governing the factual circumstances necessary to satisfy the protections of the Bill of Rig…
- stating that "[t]he central concern of the Confrontation Clause is to ensure the reliability of the evidence against a criminal defendant by subjecting it to rigorous testing in the context of an adversary proceeding before the trier of fact" (quoting Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.…

## Opinion text

Justice Scalia,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
During a custodial interrogation, Mark Lilly told police officers that petitioner committed the charged murder. The prosecution introduced a tape recording of these statements at trial without making Mark available for cross-examination. In my view, that is a paradigmatic Confrontation Clause violation. See White v. Illinois, 502 U. S. 346, 364-365 (1992) (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (“The federal constitutional right of confrontation extends to any witness who actually testifies at trial” and “extrajudicial statements only insofar as they are contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions”). Since the violation is clear, the case need be remanded only for a harmless-error determination. I therefore join Parts I, II, and VI of the Court’s opinion and coneur in the judgment.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9433829. Public record. Not legal advice.