Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/515

 502us2$25H 01-22-99 08:28:07 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 502 U. S. 346 (1992)

357

Opinion of the Court

“ ‘integrity of the factfinding process.’ ” Coy v. Iowa, 487 U. S. 1012, 1020 (1988) (quoting Kentucky v. Stincer, 482 U. S. 730, 736 (1987)). And as we have also noted, a statement that qualifies for admission under a “firmly rooted” hearsay exception is so trustworthy that adversarial testing can be expected to add little to its reliability. Wright, 497 U. S., at 820–821. Given the evidentiary value of such statements, their reliability, and that establishing a generally applicable unavailability rule would have few practical benefits while imposing pointless litigation costs, we see no reason to treat the out-of-court statements in this case differently from those we found admissible in Inadi. A contrary rule would result in exactly the kind of “wholesale revision” of the laws of evidence that we expressly disavowed in Inadi. We therefore see no basis in Roberts or Inadi for excluding from trial, under the aegis of the Confrontation Clause, evidence embraced within such exceptions to the hearsay rule as those for spontaneous declarations and statements made for medical treatment. As a second line of argument, petitioner presses upon us two recent decisions involving child testimony in childsexual-assault cases, Coy v. Iowa, supra, and Maryland v. Craig, 497 U. S. 836 (1990). Both Coy and Craig required us to consider the constitutionality of courtroom procedures designed to prevent a child witness from having to face across an open courtroom a defendant charged with sexually assaulting the child. In Coy we vacated a conviction that resulted from a trial in which a child witness testified from behind a screen, and in which there had been no particularized showing that such a procedure was necessary to avert a risk of harm to the child. In Craig we upheld a conviction that resulted from a trial in which a child witness testified via closed circuit television after such a showing of necessity. Petitioner draws from these two cases a general rule that hearsay testimony offered by a child should be permitted only upon a showing of necessity—i. e., in cases where neces-