Supreme Court, by unanimous vote, expands (and tweaks?) application of the Confrontation Clause

The Supreme Court this morning in Smith v. Arizona, No. 22-899 (S. Ct. June 21, 2024) (available here), voted unanimously to vacate a state conviction because the defendant did not have his Sixth Amendment rights of confrontation properly respected. Justice Kagan authored the opinion for the COurt, and it starts this way:

The Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause guarantees a criminal defendant the right to confront the witnesses against him. The Clause bars the admission at trial of “testimonial statements” of an absent witness unless she is “unavailable to testify, and the defendant ha[s] had a prior opportunity” to cross-examine her.  Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 53–54 (2004). And that prohibition applies in full to forensic evidence. So a prosecutor cannot introduce an absent laboratory analyst’s testimonial out-ofcourt statements to prove the results of forensic testing. See Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. 305, 307, 329 (2009).

The question presented here concerns the application of those principles to a case in which an expert witness restates an absent lab analyst’s factual assertions to support his own opinion testimony.  This Court has held that the Confrontation Clause’s requirements apply only when the prosecution uses out-of-court statements for “the truth of the matter asserted.” Crawford, 541 U.S., at 60, n. 9. Some state courts, including the court below, have held that this condition is not met when an expert recites another analyst’s statements as the basis for his opinion. Today, we reject that view.  When an expert conveys an absent analyst’s statements in support of his opinion, and the statements provide that support only if true, then the statements come into evidence for their truth. As this dispute illustrates, that will generally be the case when an expert relays an absent lab analyst’s statements as part of offering his opinion.  And if those statements are testimonial too — an issue we briefly address but do not resolve as to this case— the Confrontation Clause will bar their admission.

Because the Confrontation Clause does not apply at sentencing and I have never been able to figure it out, I am not sure how big a ruling this is. I sense from the two concurrences that this area of law is going to continue to be messy, but perhaps others can speak to the nature of the mess to expect after Mr. Smith can to SCOTUS jurisprudence.