Summary
U. S. Supreme Court decision upholding the use of a cellmate’s testimony to impeach the defendant, even though the cellmate’s testimony may have been obtained in violation of the defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel. In January 2004, Donnie Ray Ventris and his live-in girlfriend devised a plan to rob an acquaintance. The pair went to Ernest Hicks home, and Hicks was shot and killed. Ventris and his girlfriend left the scene with Hicks’ wallet, approximately $300, his cell phone, and his pickup truck. At trial, both Ventris and his girlfriend accused the other of killing Hicks. In rebuttal to Ventris’s testimony, his cellmate, Johnnie Doser, testified that Ventris told him that he was the triggerman. Doser admitted that he had been placed in Ventris’s cell and was told to keep his ears open. The defense was unable to convince the judge to strike Doser’s testimony, and the jury convicted Ventris of aggravated robbery and burglary. CJLF joined the case to argue that the Kansas Supreme Court had misinterpreted Supreme Court precedent, which allows testimony of a jailhouse informant that does not question the defendant, but only listens. An opinion authored by Justice Scalia held that Doser’s statements could be used to impeach Ventris because “[t]he interests safeguarded by such exclusion are ‘outweighed by the need to prevent perjury and to assure the integrity of the trial process.’ ” [CJLF brief in PDF.]
