# Giles v. California

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 25, 2008 · 554 U.S. 353

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9435171

## Case

- **Full name:** Giles v. California
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 25, 2008
- **Citations:** 554 U.S. 353; 128 S. Ct. 2678; 171 L. Ed. 2d 488; 2008 U.S. LEXIS 5264
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Thomas
- **Judges:** Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Ginsburg, Breyer, Stevens, Kennedy, Souter
- **Cited by:** 664 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9435171

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding forfeiture-by-wrongdoing exception was a founding-era doctrine that required wrongful conduct "designed to prevent the witness from testifying" or use of "an intermediary for the purpose of making a witness absent" and reversing the conviction based on district court's…
- explaining that this history underlay the Court’s approval of Fed.R.Evid. 804(b)(6), entitled “Forfeiture by wrongdoing,” which “applies only when the defendant ‘engaged or acquiesced in wrongdoing that was intended to, and did, procure the unavailability of the declarant as a…
- holding that California Supreme Court's theory of "forfeiture by wrongdoing" was not an exception to confrontation requirement and noting that "the guarantee of confrontation is no guarantee at all if it is subject to whatever exceptions courts from time to time consider `fair'"
- finding when an "abusive relationship culminates in murder, the evidence may support a finding that the crime expressed the intent to isolate the victim and to stop her from reporting abuse to the authorities or cooperating with a criminal prosecution . . . ."
- explaining that a dying declaration is one made "when every motive to falsehood is silenced, and the mind is induced by the most powerful considerations to speak the truth" (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)

## Opinion text

Justice Thomas,
concurring.
I write separately to note that I adhere to my view that statements like those made by the victim in this case do not implicate the Confrontation Clause. The contested evidence is indistinguishable from the statements made during police *378 questioning in response to the report of domestic violence in Hammon v. Indiana, decided with Davis v. Washington, 547 U. S. 813 (2006). There, as here, the police questioning was not “a formalized dialogue”; it was not “sufficiently formal to resemble the Marian examinations” because “the statements were neither Mirandized nor custodial, nor accompanied by any similar indicia of formality”; and “there is no suggestion that the prosecution attempted to offer [Ms. Avie’s] hearsay evidence at trial in order to evade confrontation.” See id., at 840 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part).
Nonetheless, in this case respondent does not argue that the contested evidence is nontestimonial, ante, at 358; the court below noted “no dispute” on the issue, 40 Cal. 4th 833, 841 , 152 P. 3d 433, 438 (2007); and it is outside the scope of the question presented, Brief for Petitioner i. Because the Court’s opinion accurately reflects our Confrontation Clause jurisprudence where the applicability of that Clause is not at issue, I join the Court in vacating the decision below.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9435171. Public record. Not legal advice.