Mattox v. United States

Nesson's Comments: The first Confrontation Clause case that came to the Supreme Court was Mattox v. United States, a retrial of a defendant convicted of murder on federal land. The conviction was based on the testimony of two eyewitnesses. Both the witnesses were present and were fully examined and cross-examined at the first trial. The defendants, however, successfully appealed (on grounds unrelated to confrontation problems) and obtained a new trial. By the time of the second trial, the two eyewitnesses were dead. Without the live witnesses at the second trial, the prosecutor introduced transcripts of testimony from the first trial. No further significant development of Confrontation Clause theory occurred until 1965 when the Supreme Court incorporated the Clause against the states in Pointer v. Texas. This was part of Justice Black's ongoing incorporation campaign and was the focus of his attention in the opinion he wrote in Pointer. He interprets the Confrontation Clause as a powerful protector of the defendant's right to cross-examine. He pays no attention to how his approach to the Confrontation Clause affects the hearsay rule and its myriad exceptions.