With all the other awful decisions listed in the OP, I'm going to put "honorable mention" as Washington vs. Crawford. Mr. "Original Intent" threw out years of Confrontation Clause precedent, ignored reliability guarantees built into the hearsay rules, and destroyed thousands of prosecutions of wife-beaters in the crapper over his fantasy view of the constitution.
I agree that the effect of Crawford v. Washington on domestic abuse cases is unfortunate, but well within the intent of the sixth. I think rather that the time has come to rethink the issue of spousal privilege. It is a relic of the days when husband and wife were legally one person, with the wife being the subordinate part of that person. Of days when marriage were almost always till death did they part. Those days are long since passed. Save for being an absolute bar against hearsay evidence, even in circumstances where it might otherwise be admissible, I think it's time to end spousal privilege.
Hence in the case at hand, the wife could be called to the stand to speak of what she saw of the fight, and in the case of a wife-beating case, she could be called to the stand to speak of what happened to her.
Such provisions abrogating spousal privilege when it involves a crome committed against the spouse are already near-universal in all 50 states. Not an issue.
I disagree Crawford was required, or even consistent, under the Founer's intent theory. Common law exceptions to hearsay as now largely incorporated in state rules of evidence were well established at the time. Crawford's artificial blurry line between 'testimonial' and 'non-testimonial' evidence seems based more on ad hoc rationaliztion than history.
Regardless, the Ohio v. Roberts standard requiring particularized guarantees of trustworthyness was far sounder and well-based on Sixth Amendment jurisprudence.
The effect of Crawford goes FAR beyond DV cases (though women batterers particulrly luck out) to cases relying on labratory analysisi, business records, etc (I.e. a TOON of cases).
