Agee v. State, 310 Ga. 64

Linda Agee was convicted in 2015 of the 1992 murder of her husband, Randall Peters, based on circumstantial evidence and certain out-of-court statements by Jeff Sargent.
Sargent, Agee’s long-term affair partner who later married her, made pretrial statements to police (including that if he told the truth he would get life or the death penalty) that were admitted at trial over Agee’s objection.
Sargent was granted use immunity and subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury years earlier, but after marrying Agee he invoked marital privilege and the subpoena was quashed; Sargent died of a brain aneurysm in 2006, before Agee was indicted in 2014.
The trial court admitted Sargent’s testimonial statements under the forfeiture-by-wrongdoing doctrine, finding Agee had married him to procure his unavailability.
The Supreme Court of Georgia reversed, holding the State failed to prove the requisite causal link that Agee’s wrongdoing procured Sargent’s unavailability (he died of natural causes long before indictment), so the Confrontation Clause barred admission of his testimonial statements.
The Court also noted the statements were highly incriminating and other evidence against Agee was largely circumstantial, and the State did not (and could not plausibly) show the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether testimonial out-of-court statements by a deceased witness were admissible despite the defendant’s inability to cross-examine because the defendant forfeited confrontation rights by wrongdoing	Agee: statements were testimonial and inadmissible; she had no prior opportunity to cross-examine Sargent	State: Agee forfeited confrontation rights because she married Sargent to invoke marital privilege and procure his unavailability	Reversed — forfeiture-by-wrongdoing requires that the defendant’s wrongful act actually procure the witness’s unavailability; Sargent’s natural death broke causation, so admission violated the Confrontation Clause and was not shown harmless

Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (testimonial statements and Confrontation Clause rule)
Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813 (forfeiture-by-wrongdoing principle described)
Giles v. California, 554 U.S. 353 (causation and intent elements for forfeiture discussed)
Varner v. State, 306 Ga. 726 (Georgia discussion of testimonial statements and confrontation analysis)
Hendrix v. State, 303 Ga. 525 (elements required to establish forfeiture by wrongdoing)
Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (standard for sufficiency of the evidence)