Case Summary:

In May 2020, Jeffrey Clyde Pitts’s young daughter, A.G.C., spent a weekend visiting him, and after returning home she told her mother that he had sexually abused her, which led to criminal charges. At trial, the prosecution requested that a physical screen be placed between A.G.C. and Pitts while she testified, so that the judge and jury could see her but she could not see her father. The State relied on a Mississippi statute that grants child witnesses a right to such a screen, and the trial judge approved the request, explaining that the statute appeared mandatory and expressing concern about refusing to follow it or declaring it unconstitutional. Pitts objected, arguing that even though the statute used mandatory language, the Sixth Amendment required a case-specific showing that screening was necessary in his particular case, but the trial went forward with the screen in place and the jury convicted him. He then appealed within the Mississippi courts, maintaining that the use of the screen without an individualized showing of necessity violated his confrontation rights. The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the Mississippi Supreme Court and remanded, holding that the Sixth Amendment was violated when the child witness was allowed to testify behind a screen without a case-specific finding of necessity. The Court reaffirmed that, even in child-abuse cases, a trial court must hear evidence and make a case-specific finding that screening is necessary to protect the child from trauma that would impair the child’s ability to communicate, and that a mandatory state statute or generalized legislative findings cannot substitute for this individualized determination. The Court also made clear that this confrontation error is subject to harmless-error review, and left it to the Mississippi courts on remand to decide whether the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under Chapman v. California.