Whether the balancing test created by Maryland v. Craig is still good law after Crawford v. Washington, and if so, whether extending its exemption for children from physical, face-to-face confrontation to intellectually disabled adults violates the Confrontation Clause

QUESTION PRESENTED FOR REVIEW In Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 (1990), this Court held that a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to confront a witness is satisfied without the witness’s physical, face-to-face presence before the defendant if a judge deems the witness’s testimony reliable and finds an exception to physical, face-to-face confrontation at trial is necessary to further an important public policy. Craig upheld a state statute that permitted a child accuser of sexual abuse to testify via one-way closed-circuit video from outside the courtroom when a court had found that testifying at trial in the presence of the defendant would cause the child serious emotional distress or an inability to communicate. Years after Craig, this Court in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), rejected a judicial determination of reliability as a factor for Confrontation Clause analysis. It stated that “open-ended balancing tests” undermined constitutional guarantees and that the Sixth Amendment recognized only those exceptions to confrontation “established at the time of the founding.” In Illinois, state statute 725 ILCS 5/106B-5 exempts children from physical, face-to-face confrontation with the defendant in circumstances similar to those in Craig, but also extends that protection to adults with intellectual disabilities. The question presented is: After Crawford, is the balancing test created by Craig still good law, and if so, does extending its exemption for children from physical, face-to-face confrontation to categories of adult witnesses—here, intellectually disabled adults— violate the Confrontation Clause? i