Fordham Law Review Volume 79 Issue 1 Article 7 November 2011 Sex, Threats, and Absent Victims: The Lessons of Regina v. Bedingfield for Modern Confrontation and Domestic Violence Cases Aviva Orenstein Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Aviva Orenstein, Sex, Threats, and Absent Victims: The Lessons of Regina v. Bedingfield for Modern Confrontation and Domestic Violence Cases, 79 Fordham L. Rev. 115 (2011). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol79/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Law Review by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ARTICLE SEX, THREATS, AND ABSENT VICTIMS: THE LESSONS OF REGINA V. BEDINGFIELD FOR MODERN CONFRONTATION AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CASES Aviva Orenstein* In 2004, Crawford v. Washington, authored by Justice Scalia, revolutionized the law of confrontation by requiring that, aside from two discrete exceptions, all testimonial statements (those made with the expectation that they will serve to prosecute the accused) be subject to cross-examination. This new interpretation of the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause has profoundly affected domestic violence cases, making it much harder to prosecute them successfully. Although Justice Scalia’s approach to confrontation is new, it is strikingly similar to the analysis in Regina v. Bedingfield, a notorious English murder case, which excluded from the evidence an alleged statement by the murder victim.