Posted on 06/27/2009 6:39:31 PM PDT by neverdem
Expressing a heavy dose of skepticism that crime lab reports are so reliable as to be beyond question, the Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for chemists and other scientists who prepare such reports to be summoned to the witness stand in criminal trials to defend their analyses. The 5-4 ruling in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (07-591) resulted from some unusual alliances among the Justices, and continued the deep division within the Court over how to interpret the Constitution’s guarantee that an individual on trial for a crime has a right to face and challenge the witnesses for the prosecution.
Justice Antonin Scalia, the Confrontation Clause’s most devoted defender on the Court, wrote for the majority: “There is little reason to believe that confrontation will be useless in testing analysts’ honesty, proficiency, and methodology — the features that are commonly the focus in the cross-examination of experts.”
The ruling will provide for an added layer of challenge by defense lawyers to such criminal evidence as illegal drugs, fingerprints, blood spatter patterns and blood chemistry, guns and bullets, and other forms of physical evidence subjected to lab analyses, at least when the resulting reports are prepared for use as evidence in criminal trials.
Now, if prosecutors want to offer a crime lab report as evidence, and the report was prepared with the aim that it would be used at trial, the prosecution has to bring along the author or scientist and make them available for questioining by the defense — if the defense insists on the right to confront the analyst. It is not up to defense lawyers to summon them to the stand, but they must assert the right to confront the analyst, the Court indicated.
The opinion recited a good deal of information from published reports about how defective crime labs and their results are, and said that claims that lab reports are the product of “neutral scientific testing” are open to challenge because such reports are not “as neutral or as reliable” as advertised. “Forensic evidence,” Scalia wrote, “is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation.”
He cited one report, for example, that said “there is wide variabiility across forensic science disciplines with regard to techniques, methodologies, reliability, types and numbers of potential errors, research, general acceptability, and published material.”
Putting the chemist or lab technician on the stand to be tested by cross-examination, the majority said, will help “weed out not only the fraudulent analyst, but the incompetent one as well.”
Still, Scalia said, the decision to compel the reports’ expert authors to testify is based ultimately on the right of confrontation, not the quality of the reports or the credibility of the chemist. “We would reach the same conclusion,” he wrote in a footnote, “if all analysts possessed the scientific acumen of Mme. Curie and the veracity of Mother Theresa.”
To the complaints of prosecutors (and the dissenting Justices) that the decision is going to lay a heavy new burden on the preparation and analysis of criminal evidence, Justice Scalia opined that “the sky will not fall.”
The best evidence of that, he wrote, is that the sky had not fallen even without the new ruling, because “many states have already adopted the constitutional rule that we announce today, while many others permit the defendant to assert (or forfeit by silence) his Confrontation Right after receiving notice of the prosecution’s intent to use a forensic analyst’s report…There is no evidence that the criminal justice system has ground to a halt…”
Moreover, Scalia said, defense lawyers may often opt not to insist on confronting a crime lab analyst, because they may conclude for strategic reasons that this might highlight rather than cast doubt on the report’s results as evidence.
Scalia’s opinion was supported by three of the Court’s more liberal members — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens — and by another conservative like Scalia: Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas filed a separate concurrence, putting some limits on what he understood the sweep of the ruling might be.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by two conservatives, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and a member of the liberal bloc, Justice Stephen G. Breyer. Kennedy began his dissent with a sweeping challenge: “The Court sweeps away an acceped rule governing the admission of scientific evidence. Until today, scientific evidence could be introduced into evidencde without testimony from the ‘analyst’ who produced it. This rule has been established for at least 90 years.”
This is a relief. State’s side in prosecution is often a monolith and very untruthful. There is even a word for cop testimony-—testilying.
parsy, who has read about this
One has the Constitutionally guaranteed Right to face ones accuser in open Court. If some pocket protector wearing ‘scientist’ files a report inferring my guilt you’re damn straight I want his ass on the stand.
One of the oddest 5-4 splits on record.
I wonder how the Senate legislators are going to view Sotomayer (who certainly would have empathy voted with the present majority) now. Will they see her as a frustration to their goal, which historically has been to hinder tough cross examination of alleged science in the courtroom?
Agreed. But it went the right way.
Indeed. But if Scalia and Thomas authored it, I'm confident it's right...
Too bad for your example, Nino, that Ms. Curie croaked from her carelessness with radium... but overall, good shoot.
Roberts & Alito really dropped the ball.
Scalia and Thomas are more “principle conservatives,” whereas Roberts and Alito are more “establishment conservatives.” Thank you Bush I.
Putting the chemist or lab technician on the stand to be tested by cross-examination, the majority said, will help “weed out not only the fraudulent analyst, but the incompetent one as well.”
Still, Scalia said, the decision to compel the reports’ expert authors to testify is based ultimately on the right of confrontation, not the quality of the reports or the credibility of the chemist.
Funny: We got a 1.3 trillion dollar tax bill stuffed down our throats based on faulty evidence, “scientific lies” and the outright refusal of the democrats to allow any debate on the bill .....
I’m reading John Grisham’s The Innocent Man ...and you are correct .... testimony, evidence tampering. Oi!
True, but it also allows prosecutors to question defense lab experts as well. Seems like the right decision.
It’s odd that they chose chemistry as opposed to forensic evidence or forensic science for the title, considering chemistry has to be one the more opaque sciences to them after they let the EPA call carbon dioxide a pollutant.
I hope not. I used to think conservative judges were better because of the word “conservative.” I found out “liberal” judges tend to be more pro-citizen. “Conservative” judges are more pro-gov’t. We need better words. grishams books are very very realistic.
parsy, who read a few of them.
What goes on behind the scenes would shock you.
parsy, who want to see criminals locked up or punished, but...
The result will be that more guilty perps will end up in jail longer, and a couple of guys who might be lucky ('cause the lab messed up something) will get to go back on the street and try it again real soon.
I seriously doubt it will reduce the number of innocent people sent to jail.
The statists offered nary a word of complaint when the state used taxpayer money to hire all these guys who essentially back up the prosecutor, truly a "heavy new burden" for the defense. They can hardly call this a "heavy new burden" for the prosecution.
Well, I assume the attorneys for the guilty guys will figure that out and react accordingly, but it’s at least a new tool that can be used by people to show the lab-state-prosecution relationship instead of being forced to treat lab results paid from the same purse as the prosecution as holy writ.
That's a pretty Leftwingtard thought ~ they claim that if a private company pays a scientist to investigate something, he will simply tell them what they want to hear, but if the government pays, then it's all TRUE.
Just showing a "link" does not demonstrate "error". Correlation is not Causation.
My own thought is that "riding time" counts in Court, so you don't want your lawyer standing there wasting time highlighting the reasons you are in court ~ you want him getting you off the hook!
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