http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0321scotus0321.html

High court debates use of 911 reports

Toni Locy Associated Press Mar. 21, 2006 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court considered Monday whether statements made by victims to 911 operators and police officers at crime scenes should be barred as evidence because they were not made under oath or subjected to cross-examination by a defendant.

In cases from Washington and Indiana, the justices focused on whether the rights of Adrian Davis and Hershel Hammon were violated because their accusers did not testify at their trials.

The issue is significant because the high court's ruling could affect the ability of prosecutors to bring criminal charges, particularly in domestic violence cases, when victims or key witnesses are not willing or available to testify.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out that "many women in these situations are scared to death" and don't want to testify.

She worried aloud that if the justices issue a ruling that police consider more trouble than their efforts are worth, officers might wonder why they should bother pursuing domestic violence cases.

Lawyers on all sides of the cases, as well as the Bush administration, want the justices to clarify a 2004 decision that barred prosecutors' use of statements from victims or witnesses if a defendant did not have a chance to question them in court.

Justice Antonin Scalia, author of the 2004 majority ruling, grilled lawyers for Washington and Indiana about a defendant's right to confront his or her accuser.

Scalia worried about what would happen to defendants who were charged with crimes based on "false" statements from witnesses who never testified. And he wondered whether 911 operators, by asking so many questions of victims, aren't being used by police as "a prosecutorial device."

At Davis' trial, a judge allowed the tape of abuse victim Michelle McCottry's February 2001 emergency call to be admitted into evidence but barred police testimony about what McCottry had said to officers. She disappeared before trial and did not testify.

In the case out of Peru, Ind., Amy Hammon also did not testify. But a judge allowed an officer to testify that she had told him that her husband, Hershel, had thrown her into the glass panel of a gas heater.