Pointer v. Texas

Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Black stated unequivocally that states must permit criminal defendants to confront and cross-examine witnesses against them in all cases where the federal standard for observing the Confrontation Clause applies:

[T]he right of cross-examination is included in the right of an accused in a criminal case to confront the witnesses against him . . . There are few subjects . . . upon which this Court and other courts have been more nearly unanimous than in their expressions of belief that the right of confrontation and cross-examination is an essential and fundamental requirement for the kind of fair trial which is this country's constitutional goal. Indeed, we have expressly declared that to deprive an accused of the right to cross-examine the witnesses against him is a denial of the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of due process of law.

In other words, the right of the accused to confront his accusers is grounded in the necessity for cross-examination. And because cross-examination of witnesses requires some legal skill, criminal defendants must be represented by counsel. The Court did recognize that there are some practical limitations on this rule: where a key witness has died, for example, admission of his or her earlier testimony must be admitted at trial. Following Pointer, however, the exceptions to the rule are the same both in federal and state criminal prosecutions.

Pointer, with its unanimous decision, proved to be one of the least controversial cases in the so-called due process revolution of the 1940s through the 1960s. Led by Justice Black, this "revolution" succeeded in making most of the guarantees of the Bill of Rights applicable at the state level through the Fourteenth Amendment. Both civil rights and criminal procedure were radically altered as a result of this expansion of individual liberties, giving rise to a backlash. Pointer, however, was never challenged.