The Supreme Court today holds that a defendant who was prevented from seeing an alleged victim testify against him because a computer monitor was positioned to block his view was denied his Sixth Amendment right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” The court’s unanimous opinion by Justice Ming Chin in People v. Arredondo reverses convictions of child sexual offenses against that witness. The defendant’s view of two other witnesses was similarly blocked, but the court lets stand his convictions for molesting them because his counsel did not object to their obscured testimony.
The court does not categorically rule out the witness accommodation that was used at trial, but says it wasn’t justified by the record in this case. The witness, who was 18 when she testified, “started crying the first time she entered the courtroom and the court took a short recess to allow her to compose herself.” But, the Supreme Court says, “[t]o find that an accommodation was constitutionally permissible” based “merely” on those facts would improperly “give courts license to abridge the right of face-to-face confrontation almost any time a witness breaks down on the stand.”
As to the convictions that are reversed, the court disagrees with a divided Fourth District, Division Two, Court of Appeal.