What has IV to do with the Law (Sixth Amendment)

[Mark Kohut]

Quite interesting and some kind of leap of logic in your subject line.
Care to make the connection for those not as creatively out of the box as you...?

--- On Sat, 1/9/10, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: What has IV to do with the Law (Sixth Amendment)
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Saturday, January 9, 2010, 7:40 AM
> In a 2008 case in California, police
> tried to use testimony taken on
> film from an accuser. The witness died after the film was
> made. Can
> you be accused by the ghosts of the dead? Do you have a
> right to
> confron your dead accusers?
> 
> Federal Rulings on the Confrontation Clause
> COY V. IOWA. In June 1988 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a
> case
> similar to Commonwealth v. Willis. An Iowa trial court,
> pursuant to a
> state law enacted to protect child victims of sexual abuse,
> allowed a
> screen to be placed between the two child witnesses and the
> alleged
> abuser. The lighting in the courtroom was adjusted so that
> the
> children could not see the defendant, Coy, through the
> screen. Coy,
> however, was able to see the children dimly and hear them
> testify. The
> trial judge cautioned the jury that the presence of the
> screen was not
> an indication of guilt. Coy was convicted.
> 
> In Coy v. Iowa (397 N.W.2d 730 [1986]) Coy appealed to the
> Iowa
> Supreme Court, arguing that the screen denied him the right
> to
> confront his accusers face to face as provided by the Sixth
> Amendment.
> In addition, he claimed that due process was denied because
> the
> presence of the screen implied guilt. The Iowa Supreme
> Court, however,
> upheld the conviction of the trial court, ruling that the
> screen had
> not hurt Coy's right to cross-examine the child witnesses,
> nor did its
> presence necessarily imply guilt.
> 
> The U.S. Supreme Court, however, in a 6–2 decision,
> reversed the
> ruling of the Iowa Supreme Court and remanded the case to
> the trial
> court for further proceedings. In Coy v. Iowa (487 U.S.
> 1012 [1988])
> the high court maintained that the right to face-to-face
> confrontation
> was the essential element of the Sixth Amendment's
> Confrontation
> Clause. It held that any exceptions to that guarantee would
> be allowed
> only if needed to further an important public policy. The
> Court found
> no specific evidence in this case that these witnesses
> needed special
> protection that would require a screen.
>