Ruling raises new questions about remote testimony in court

An overturned conviction in Missouri is raising new questions about video testimony in criminal court cases nationwide, and the ruling could have ripple effects through a justice system increasingly reliant on remote technology as it struggles with a backlog of cases during the coronavirus pandemic. Missouri’s highest court on Tuesday reversed the statutory rape conviction of Rodney Smith in a case from St. Louis, finding that an investigator’s video testimony violated the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him. The investigator appeared remotely in 2019 because he was on paternity leave, testifying that DNA evidence taken from the victim’s clothing matched the defendant’s DNA. The girl had since recanted her accusations, so the conviction and sentence of probation turned on the DNA evidence.

Many state and federal courts halted all criminal trials for months during the pandemic, allowing remote trials only when defendants explicitly agreed to forfeit any rights to in-person confrontation of their accusers. The Missouri ruling differs from many pandemic-era cases because the judge went ahead despite the defendant’s objections. State court systems typically handle millions of cases every year in total, the vast majority of which will not be directly affected by the legal questions raised in the Missouri ruling. The number of trials also plummeted during the pandemic. But even if that decision impacts only several hundred cases, it would mean yet more challenges for an already overburdened judiciary. The decision could eventually make this a test case for the U.S. Supreme Court, said Michael Wolff, a former chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court and a professor at the St. Louis University School of Law. “This guy was convicted with the use of Zoom technology and could not have been convicted without it,” Wolff said. The nation’s highest court has allowed exemptions for child witness to testify remotely to shield them from a potentially traumatic experience, but “you still don’t get away from the fact that the Constitution says there’s a right to confrontation.”