A recent arti­cle in the Akron Law Review asks whether the Federal Death Penalty Act (FDPA) is in com­pli­ance with the Sixth Amendment​’s right to con­front wit­ness­es because it allows hearsay evi­dence in deter­min­ing whether a defen­dant is eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. During a typ­i­cal crim­i­nal tri­al, the accused has the right to chal­lenge and cross exam­ine the tes­ti­mo­ny of state wit­ness­es who must appear in per­son. But in a death penal­ty case, the FDPA allows state­ments of wit­ness­es not present in the court­room to be used to deter­mine whether the defen­dan­t’s case fits one of the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors nec­es­sary for a death sen­tence. The arti­cle’s authors, Michael Pepson and John Sharifi, write: “[A]llowing the gov­ern­ment to prove statu­to­ry aggra­vat­ing fac­tors … with tes­ti­mo­ni­al hearsay, even where the defen­dant has nev­er had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cross-exam­ine the declarant(s), is not con­sti­tu­tion­al.” The authors sug­gest two con­sti­tu­tion­al alter­na­tives: doing away entire­ly with the FDPA or revis­ing the law to include the aggra­vat­ing-fac­tor deter­mi­na­tion in the guilt phase of the tri­al, sub­ject to the usu­al rules of evi­dence. This would allow fed­er­al cap­i­tal defen­dants to con­front wit­ness­es regard­ing the crit­i­cal ques­tion of whether they are eli­gi­ble for a death sentence.

(M. Pepson & J. Sharifi, ​“Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right,” 43 Akron Law Review 1 (2010)). See Law Reviews.

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