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Alert – Melendez-Diaz decided!
Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts
This is the link to the Supreme Court Decision in M-D.
Here’s a link to the arguments before the court.
Laboratory reports ARE testimonial. Now, what reports are covered?
Here is a “comment” by Crime & Consequences blog.
Justice Scalia, writing for a 5-4 majority, authored the Supreme Court’s decision in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts. Today’s decision held that a forensic lab report is “testimonial” evidence under Crawford and that admission of the report violated Melendez-Diaz’s Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses against him. As Justice Kennedy pointed out in his dissent, today’s decision “sweeps away an accepted rule governing the admission of scientific evidence. Until today, scientific analysis could be introduced into evidence without testimony from the ‘analyst’ who produced it. This rule has been established for at least 90 years…. Yet the Court undoes it based on two recent opinions that say nothing about forensic analysts: Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), and Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813 (2006).” Kennedy’s dissent was joined by Justices Alito and Breyer, and Chief Justice Roberts.
Professor Freidman’s thoughts are pending at Confrontation blog. He wrote an amicus brief in the case.