High Court to Decide Whether Lab Reports Violate Confrontation Clause
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a state forensic lab report can be admitted as evidence absent testimony from the expert who prepared it.
The appeal is a “significant new case on the confrontation clause,” SCOTUSblog reports.
The petition for certiorari (PDF) claims the report is testimonial evidence subject to the demands of the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause. It notes that many state legislatures have classified such reports as business or public records that can be admitted instead of live testimony.
Federal and state courts “are openly and deeply divided” on the issue of the constitutionality of such laws, the petition says. It argues that the court’s 2004 decision on the right to confrontation in Crawford v. Washington forbids the use of such reports as evidence.
The case is Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts.
