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Opinion of Stevens, J.
have the effect of excluding other hearsay evidence, such as dying declarations, whose admissibility neither the Framers nor anyone else 100 years later "would have [had] the hardihood . . . to question." Ibid.
We now describe a hearsay exception as "firmly rooted" if, in light of "longstanding judicial and legislative experience," Idaho v. Wright, 497 U. S. 805, 817 (1990), it "rest[s] [on] such [a] solid foundatio[n] that admission of virtually any evidence within [it] comports with the 'substance of the constitutional protection.' " Roberts, 448 U. S., at 66 (quoting Mattox, 156 U. S., at 244). This standard is designed to allow the introduction of statements falling within a category of hearsay whose conditions have proved over time "to remove all temptation to falsehood, and to enforce as strict an adherence to the truth as would the obligation of an oath" and cross-examination at a trial. Ibid. In White, for instance, we held that the hearsay exception for spontaneous declarations is firmly rooted because it "is at least two centuries old," currently "widely accepted among the States," and carries "substantial guarantees of . . . trustworthiness . . . [that] cannot be recaptured even by later in-court testimony." 502 U. S., at 355-356, and n. 8. Established practice, in short, must confirm that statements falling within a category of hearsay inherently "carr[y] special guarantees of credibility" essentially equivalent to, or greater than, those produced by the Constitution's preference for cross-examined trial testimony. Id., at 356.
The "against penal interest" exception to the hearsay rule—unlike other previously recognized firmly rooted exceptions—is not generally based on the maxim that statements made without a motive to reflect on the legal consequences of one's statement, and in situations that are exceptionally conducive to veracity, lack the dangers of inaccuracy that typically accompany hearsay. The exception, rather, is founded on the broad assumption "that a person is unlikely to fabricate a statement against his own interest at
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