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Opinion of Stevens, J.
orous testing in the context of an adversary proceeding before the trier of fact." Maryland v. Craig, 497 U. S. 836, 845 (1990). When the government seeks to offer a declarant's out-of-court statements against the accused, and, as in this case, the declarant is unavailable,1 courts must decide whether the Clause permits the government to deny the accused his usual right to force the declarant "to submit to cross-examination, the 'greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.' " California v. Green, 399 U. S. 149, 158 (1970) (footnote and citation omitted).
In our most recent case interpreting the Confrontation Clause, White v. Illinois, 502 U. S. 346 (1992), we rejected the suggestion that the Clause should be narrowly construed to apply only to practices comparable to "a particular abuse common in 16th- and 17th-century England: prosecuting a defendant through the presentation of ex parte affidavits, without the affiants ever being produced at trial." Id., at 352. This abuse included using out-of-court depositions and " 'confessions of accomplices.' " Green, 399 U. S., at 157. Accord, White, 502 U. S., at 361, 363 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (noting that this rule applies even if the confession is "found to be reliable"). Because that restrictive reading of the Clause's term "witnesses" would have virtually eliminated the Clause's role in restricting the admission of hearsay testimony, we considered it foreclosed by our prior cases. Instead, we adhered to our general framework, summarized in Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U. S. 56 (1980), that the veracity of hearsay statements is sufficiently dependable to allow the untested admission of such statements against an accused when (1) "the evidence
1 Petitioner suggests in his merits brief that Mark was not truly "un-available" because the Commonwealth could have tried and sentenced him before petitioner's trial, thereby extinguishing Mark's Fifth Amendment privilege. We assume, however, as petitioner did in framing his petition for certiorari, that to the extent it is relevant, Mark was an unavailable witness for Confrontation Clause purposes.
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