March 2010
The U.S. Supreme Court has dismissed a challenge to its ruling last year that lab analysts and other forensic specialists must be available to testify in person at trials. The court ordered the case, Briscoe v. Virginia, back to state court for further consideration.
In a Jan. 25 one-line order, the court said, "We vacate the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with the opinion in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts."
Last year, in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, the court ruled, 5-4, that analysts who create crime lab reports must be available to be cross-examined on how they reached those results. Prosecutors can no longer rely on the crime lab report as prima-facie evidence of what they assert. The ruling applies to testing for blood alcohol, narcotics, or any substance whose results are included in a crime lab report and to the qualifications and skills of personnel who produce the test results cited in the report.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, held that a criminal defendant has the right under the Sixth Amendment "to be confronted with the witnesses against him." Cross-examination of witnesses "is designed to weed out not only the fraudulent analyst, but the incompetent one as well" and "forensic evidence is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation."
Scalia dismissed dissenters’ arguments that producing analysts in court would be burdensome and costly. "The confrontation clause may make the prosecution of criminals more burdensome, but that is equally true of the right to trial by jury and the privilege against self-incrimination."
Issue in Briscoe Legal Challenge
The issue in Briscoe v. Virginia was whether the state met its obligation under the confrontation clause by giving a defendant the right to call the lab expert as his own witness, and if the defendant declines to do so, must the state present the lab expert for cross-examination.
The defendant was convicted on cocaine charges based in part on "certificates of analysis" from the state lab attesting to the amount and type of drugs found during his arrest. During the trial, the defense argued that the drug evidence needed to be presented in live testimony to allow for cross-examination, but the judge admitted the testimonials. The defense did not call the lab analyst as its own witness.
The conviction was upheld by a state appellate court, which consolidated the case with a similar appeal (Magruder v. Commonwealth), and subsequently by the Virginia Supreme Court, which stated, "Because the defendants in these appeals failed to call the lab experts, they waived the challenges under the confrontation clause to the admissibility of the certificates of analysis."
The U.S. Supreme Court in Melendez-Diaz indicated that an approach like Virginia’s, shifting the burden of calling the witness to the defendant, would not satisfy the state’s obligation under the Sixth Amendment confrontation clause.
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March 2010 - Table of Contents
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