Mancusi v. Stubbs

Background

A man convicted of murder in Tennessee was retried in 1964 after a 1954 conviction was set aside. The key witness from the 1954 trial had moved to Sweden and did not appear at the retrial. Tennessee read the witness’s earlier trial testimony to the jury, and the defendant was convicted again. New York later used that 1964 conviction to impose a harsher sentence as a repeat offender, and the defendant challenged the use of the Tennessee conviction on the ground that he had been denied the right to confront the witness.

Reasoning

The Court considered whether the Constitution forbids use of the earlier testimony when the witness lives abroad and did not appear. It compared this case to earlier decisions (including Barber v. Page) and focused on two points: whether the witness was truly unavailable and whether the earlier testimony was reliable. The Court found that a full jury trial in 1954 with effective cross-examination gave the prior testimony sufficient reliability. It also concluded that Swedish residency made the witness effectively unavailable and that Tennessee could not reasonably have compelled him to appear. Because the prior testimony bore adequate ‘‘indicia of reliability,’’ the 1964 conviction stood.

Real world impact

The result lets states sometimes count out-of-state or out-of-country retrials as valid prior convictions for enhanced sentencing when the earlier trial included real cross-examination and the witness cannot be brought to court. The decision reversed the Court of Appeals and removed a barrier to using that Tennessee conviction in New York sentencing.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Marshall dissented, arguing the Court should have dismissed the case as improvidently granted and criticized the presumption of unavailability for a witness living abroad.