Supreme Court reaffirms right to use constitutionally tainted statement for impeachment
In a decision issued on April 29th, the Supreme Court -- in a decision which thematically follows from the previous post regarding the breadth of the "impeachment by contradiction" doctrine -- has reaffirmed the principle that a defendant may be impeached with a statement obtained from him in violation of the Sixth Amendment. Kansas v. Ventris, 556 U.S. ___, No. 07-1356 (Apr. 29, 2009).
Defendant Ventris was convicted of various charges in state court after the jury was allowed to hear from a jailhouse informant, who testified that Ventris admitted in his jail cell after arrest on these charges that he had committed a robbery and murder. As Ventris's Sixth Amendment rights had attached, the statement was plainly obtained in violation of the Sixth Amendment under Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 218, 224 (1964) and could not be used in the State's case in chief. The prosecution did, however, persuade the trial court to allow use of the statement to cross-examine Ventris after he testified that another defendant had committed the crime.
The Supreme Court held that the tainted statement was permissibly used to impeach Ventris's inconsistent testimony at trial. In a majority opinion by Justice Scalia, the Court explained that "[o]ur precedents make clear that the game of excluding tainted evidence for impeachment purposes is not worth the candle … It is one thing to say that the Government cannot make an affirmative use of evidence unlawfully obtained. It is quite another to say that the defendant can … provide himself with a shield against contradiction of his untruths." Slip op. at 6.
