The New Jersey Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that various provisions of the New Jersey Constitution provide greater protection to individual rights than analogous provisions of the United States Constitution. That long-recognized general principle was shattered when the court released on the same day at the end of its term a trilogy of decisions dealing with the Confrontation Clause, narrowly construing its protections. State v. Michaels, ___ N.J. ___, 2014 N.J. Lexis 831 (Aug. 6, 2014); State v. Roach, ___ N.J. ___, 2014 N.J. Lexis 806 (Aug. 6, 2014); and State v. Williams, ___ N.J. ___, 2014 N.J. Lexis 805 (Aug. 6, 2014). Arguably, the court’s interpretation of the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court it discussed was even more restrictive than that of the U.S. Supreme Court itself. At issue in each of the New Jersey cases was whether defendants’ rights had been violated when the state offered the testimony of surrogates in lieu of the testimony of the analysts who actually performed certain forensic tests.

At the center of the cases was the applicability of Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that testimonial hearsay statements may not be received in evidence unless the person making the statement testifies in court and is subject to cross-examination. The purpose for the rule was to permit the reliability of the evidence offered to be challenged through adversarial testing.

State v. Michaels

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