136
Opinion of Stevens, J.
The residual "trustworthiness" test credits the axiom that a rigid application of the Clause's standard for admissibility might in an exceptional case exclude a statement of an unavailable witness that is incontestably probative, competent, and reliable, yet nonetheless outside of any firmly rooted hearsay exception. Cf. id., at 63; Mattox, 156 U. S., at 243- 244. When a court can be confident—as in the context of hearsay falling within a firmly rooted exception—that "the declarant's truthfulness is so clear from the surrounding circumstances that the test of cross-examination would be of marginal utility," the Sixth Amendment's residual "trustworthiness" test allows the admission of the declarant's statements. Wright, 497 U. S., at 820.
Nothing in our prior opinions, however, suggests that appellate courts should defer to lower courts' determinations regarding whether a hearsay statement has particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. To the contrary, those opinions indicate that we have assumed, as with other fact-intensive, mixed questions of constitutional law, that "[i]ndependent review is . . . necessary . . . to maintain control of, and to clarify, the legal principles" governing the factual circumstances necessary to satisfy the protections of the Bill of Rights. Ornelas v. United States, 517 U. S. 690, 697 (1996) (holding that appellate courts should review reasonable suspicion and probable-cause determinations de novo). We, of course, accept the Virginia courts' determination that Mark's statements were reliable for purposes of state hearsay law, and, as should any appellate court, we review the
"facts and circumstances" formula, recited above, that the Virginia courts already employed in reaching their reliability holdings is virtually identical to the Roberts "particularized guarantees" test, which turns as well on the "surrounding circumstances" of the statements. Idaho v. Wright, 497 U. S. 805, 820 (1990). Furthermore, as will become clear, the Commonwealth fails to point to any fact regarding this issue that the Supreme Court of Virginia did not explicitly consider and that requires serious analysis.
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