Lee v. Illinois

Petitioner and a co-defendant, charged with committing a double murder, were tried jointly in a bench trial. Neither defendant testified at trial. In finding petitioner guilty as charged, the trial judge expressly relied on portions of the co-defendants confession, obtained by police at the time of arrest, as substantive evidence against petitioner. The question for decision is whether such reliance by the judge upon the co-defendants confession violated petitioners rights as secured by the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.