Cite as: 527 U. S. 116 (1999)
Opinion of Stevens, J.
weight the jury could assign to them and not to their admissibility." Id., at 574, 499 S. E. 2d, at 534.
Our concern that this decision represented a significant departure from our Confrontation Clause jurisprudence prompted us to grant certiorari. 525 U. S. 981 (1998).
II
As an initial matter, the Commonwealth asserts that we should decline to exercise jurisdiction over petitioner's claim because he did not fairly present his Confrontation Clause challenge to the Supreme Court of Virginia. We disagree. Although petitioner focused on state hearsay law in his challenge to the admission of Mark's statements, petitioner expressly argued in his opening brief to that court that the admission of the statements violated his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. He expanded his Sixth Amendment argument in his reply brief and cited Lee v. Illinois, 476 U. S. 530 (1986), and Williamson v. United States, 512 U. S. 594 (1994), in response to the Commonwealth's contention that the admission of the statements was constitutional. These arguments, particularly the reliance on our Confrontation Clause opinion in Lee, sufficed to raise in the Supreme Court of Virginia the constitutionality of admitting Mark's statements. See Taylor v. Illinois, 484 U. S. 400, 406, n. 9 (1988). Indeed, the court addressed petitioner's Confrontation Clause claim without mentioning any waiver problems.
III
In all criminal prosecutions, state as well as federal, the accused has a right, guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, "to be confronted with the witnesses against him." U. S. Const., Amdt. 6; Pointer v. Texas, 380 U. S. 400 (1965) (applying Sixth Amendment to the States). "The central concern of the Confrontation Clause is to ensure the reliability of the evidence against a criminal defendant by subjecting it to rig-
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