122
Opinion of the Court
interest because they shifted responsibility for the crimes to Barker and to petitioner, and that their admission would violate the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause. The trial judge overruled the objection and admitted the tape recordings and written transcripts of the statements in their entirety. The jury found petitioner guilty of robbery, abduction, carjacking, possession of a firearm by a felon, and four charges of illegal use of a firearm, for which offenses he received consecutive prison sentences of two life terms plus 27 years. The jury also convicted petitioner of capital murder and recommended a sentence of death, which the court imposed.
The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed petitioner's convictions and sentences. As is relevant here, the court first concluded that Mark's statements were declarations of an unavailable witness against penal interest; that the statements' reliability was established by other evidence; and, therefore, that they fell within an exception to the Virginia hearsay rule. The court then turned to petitioner's Confrontation Clause challenge. It began by relying on our opinion in White v. Illinois, 502 U. S. 346 (1992), for the proposition that " '[w]here proffered hearsay has sufficient guarantees of reliability to come within a firmly rooted exception to the hearsay rule, the Confrontation Clause is satisfied.' " 255 Va. 558, 574, 499 S. E. 2d 522, 534 (1998) (quoting White, 502 U. S., at 356). The Virginia court also remarked:
"[A]dmissiblity into evidence of the statement against penal interest of an unavailable witness is a 'firmly rooted' exception to the hearsay rule in Virginia. Thus, we hold that the trial court did not err in admitting Mark Lilly's statements into evidence." 255 Va., at 575, 499 S. E. 2d, at 534. "That Mark Lilly's statements were self-serving, in that they tended to shift principal responsibility to others or to offer claims of mitigating circumstances, goes to the
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