Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/519

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

361

Opinion of Thomas, J.

Relevant historical sources and our own earlier decisions, nonetheless, suggest that a narrower reading of the Clause than the one given to it since 1980 may well be correct. In 16th-century England, magistrates interrogated the prisoner, accomplices, and others prior to trial. These interrogations were “intended only for the information of the court. The prisoner had no right to be, and probably never was, present.” 1 J. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 221 (1883). At the trial itself, “proof was usually given by reading depositions, confessions of accomplices, letters, and the like; and this occasioned frequent demands by the prisoner to have his ‘accusers,’ i. e., the witnesses against him, brought before him face to face. . . .” Id., at 326. See also 5 Wigmore, supra, § 1364, at 13 (“[T]here was . . . no appreciation at all of the necessity of calling a person to the stand as a witness”; rather, it was common practice to obtain “information by consulting informed persons not called into court”); 9 W. Holdsworth, History of English Law 227–229 (3d ed. 1944). The infamous trial of Sir Walter Raleigh on charges of treason in 1603 in which the Crown’s primary evidence against him was the confession of an alleged coconspirator (the confession was repudiated before trial and probably had been obtained by torture) is a well-known example of this feature of English criminal procedure. See Pollitt, The Right of Confrontation: Its History and Modern Dress, 8 J. Pub. L. 381, 388–389 (1959); 1 Stephen, supra, at 333–336; 9 Holdsworth, supra, at 216–217, 226–228. Apparently in response to such abuses, a common-law right of confrontation began to develop in England during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. 5 Wigmore, supra, § 1364, at 23; Pollitt, supra, at 389–390. Justice Story believed that the Sixth Amendment codified some of this common law, 3 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States 662 (1833), and this Court previously has recognized the common-law origins of the right, see Salinger v. United States, 272 U. S. 542, 548 (1926) (“The right of con-