Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/516

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WHITE v. ILLINOIS Opinion of Thomas, J.

sary to protect the child’s physical and psychological wellbeing. Petitioner’s reliance is misplaced. Coy and Craig involved only the question of what in-court procedures are constitutionally required to guarantee a defendant’s confrontation right once a witness is testifying. Such a question is quite separate from that of what requirements the Confrontation Clause imposes as a predicate for the introduction of out-ofcourt declarations. Coy and Craig did not speak to the latter question. As we recognized in Coy, the admissibility of hearsay statements raises concerns lying at the periphery of those that the Confrontation Clause is designed to address, 487 U. S., at 1016. There is thus no basis for importing the “necessity requirement” announced in those cases into the much different context of out-of-court declarations admitted under established exceptions to the hearsay rule. For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Illinois Appellate Court is Affirmed. Justice Thomas, with whom Justice Scalia joins, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. The Court reaches the correct result under our precedents. I write separately only to suggest that our Confrontation Clause jurisprudence has evolved in a manner that is perhaps inconsistent with the text and history of the Clause itself. The Court unnecessarily rejects, in dicta, the United States’ suggestion that the Confrontation Clause in general may not regulate the admission of hearsay evidence. See ante, at 352–353. The truth may be that this Court’s cases unnecessarily have complicated and confused the relationship between the constitutional right of confrontation and the hearsay rules of evidence. The Confrontation Clause provides simply that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right. ..