U.S Supreme Court permits Teacher Testimony in Child-Abuse Cases

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On Thursday the Supreme Court made it easier for prosecutors to bring child-abuse cases without young children having to conform, allowing jurors to hear from teachers whose students told them they were abused.

The case centered on Cleveland defendant Darius Clark, who was convicted after a trial in which preschool teachers conformed the alleged victim—a 3-year-old known in court papers as L.P.—told them Mr. Clark was responsible for his bruises and abrasions.

L.P. didn’t testify during the proceedings. Mr. Clark, the boyfriend of the child’s mother, was sentenced to 28 years in prison after being convicted of abusing L.P. and his 18-month-old sister.

Mr. Clark, citing his rights under the Constitution’s Confrontation Clause, argued the teachers’ testimony shouldn’t have been allowed because he had no opportunity to cross-examine the child about what he said at school.

The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, rejected that argument, saying the testimony didn’t violate Mr. Clark’s right to confront the witnesses against him.

“Because neither the child nor his teachers had the primary purpose of assisting in Clark’s prosecution, the child’s statements do not implicate the Confrontation Clause and therefore were admissible at trial,” Justice Alito wrote.

The ruling reversed a decision from the Ohio Supreme Court, which had sided with Mr. Clark and found the conviction invalid.

The case had attracted close study. Teachers groups, child advocates and more than 40 states signed onto briefs supporting Ohio prosecutors, warning an adverse ruling could have impeded child-abuse prosecutions nationwide and traumatized children if they were required to testify.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine called the ruling “a great victory for protecting Ohio’s children.”

In a majority of states, young children are generally considered too unreliable to testify at trial. Teachers, meanwhile, are among a group of professionals that are required to report suspected child abuse to authorities.

Criminal defense organizations and a group that works to discharge the wrongfully convicted lined up on the other side of the case, arguing it was crucial that defendants be allowed to test evidence against them, particularly because children can provide unreliable testimony that is susceptible to suggestion from adults.

Lawyers for Mr. Clark couldn’t be reached for comment.

All nine justices agreed in Thursday’s judgment, but three of them—Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas—objected to the majority’s legal analysis. In a sharply worded concurring opinion, Justice Scalia accused Justice Alito of mounting a stealth campaign to undermine a landmark ruling Justice Scalia wrote in 2004 that strengthened defendants’ rights to confront witnesses in court.

Separately, the Supreme Court tightened the rules for prosecuting designer-drug offenses, holding prosecutors must prove a defendant knew he was selling a controlled substance or a product with similar characteristics.

The unanimous decision threw out the conviction of Stephen McFadden, who was convicted of selling so-called bath salts, which can have effects similar to cocaine or methamphetamine, at high prices under such names as “Alpha” and “Speed.”

Jurors were required only to find that Mr. McFadden had sold the product, without proof that he knew it met the legal definition of a controlled substance or its analogue.

Justice Thomas wrote for the court, joined in full or part by all other justices.

The decision follows one earlier this month that likewise pushed back against zero-tolerance drug enforcement policies. By a 7-2 vote, the justices on June 1 found the government went too far in deporting a resident alien who was found with four Adderall tablets in his sock without a prescription.

In a third ruling Thursday, the court reinstated a death sentence for a Hispanic man convicted of a triple murder in San Diego in 1985, in a 5-4 ruling with conservative justices in the majority. The defendant, Hector Ayala, argued prosecutors were motivated by racial discrimination during jury selection when they moved to strike all potential Hispanic and black jurors.

Prosecutors offered race-neutral reasons for challenging those jurors and the judge accepted them. But an appeals court threw out Mr. Ayala’s conviction because the exchange between the prosecution and the judge took place without a defense lawyer present. Justice Alito, announcing his second opinion of the day, held that the appeals court was wrong to toss the conviction, saying any errors that took place in the jury selection process were harmless.

A notable side battle took place between two justices in the majority. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion to highlight concerns about the “human toll” of solitary confinement, where inmates like Mr. Ayala spend years “in a windowless cell no larger than a typical parking spot for 23 hours a day.”

Justice Thomas responded with a one-paragraph concurrence that said Mr. Ayala’s accommodations “are a far sight more spacious than those in which his victims…now rest.”