Court Case Of Michigan V. Richard Bryant

Police were called to a Gas station where a man had been shot and upon arrival the man was found to be shot and was able to tell officers that he had been shot by Bryant at bryants house and that he made it to the gas station. The victim saw Mr. Bryant as a constant threat so he left the area but did not tell the police if the problem was only with him. The victim died shortly after which left a lot of unanswered questions. ("Law school case brief Michigan V Bryant", 2013). In 2010 in Michigan Richard Bryant was found guilty of murder in the second degree and was a felon who was in control of a firearm which had been used while a felony was committed. Mr. Bryant at his appeal hearing said that the statement made by the victim who subsequently died due to being shot and his statement being able to be read in court violated his sixth amendment right to confront his accuser. In the statement the Victim stated that Mr. Bryant had shot him, however, the man died shortly after his admission of what happened to him. ("Michigan V. Bryant | Oyez", 2011).

Bryant | Oyez" (2011), " The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court. The Michigan Supreme Court reversed, holding that the statements that the victim made to police before his death were testimonial and their admission violated Mr. Bryant's right to confrontation. The court reasoned that the victim's statements were made in the course of a police interrogation whose primary purpose was to establish or prove events that had already occurred, not to enable police to meet an ongoing emergency. Therefore, the statements were "testimonial" for the purposes of the enhanced confrontation protections set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in Crawford v. Washington and should not have been admitted against Mr. Bryant at trial because he did not have the opportunity to cross-examine the victim prior to his