Supreme Court Ruling Requires Crime Lab Analysts to Testify
By Rebecca Waters
Get ready to trade your lab coat for a suit coat. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last Thursday will require crime lab analysts to appear in court and submit to cross-examination if their reports are entered into evidence. This ruling could have tremendous impacts on how crime labs operate and exacerbate the backlog problems that plague crime labs nationwide.
The contentious 5-4 ruling in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts asserts that forensic analysts must testify under the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause granting defendants the right to confront witnesses against them. Previously analysts could be subpoenaed to court to explain their reports or methodology, but it was a rare practice.
In his decision, Justice Antonin Scalia called into question the reliability of forensic science as a whole, citing the recent National Academy of Science report. Refuting the argument that forensic reports, as scientific findings, are neutral facts rather than accusatory testimony, Justice Scalia wrote, “Forensic evidence is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation. According to a recent study conducted under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences. … Confrontation is designed to weed out not only the fraudulent analyst, but the incompetent one as well. Serious deficiencies have been found in the forensic evidence used in criminal trials.”
“Like expert witnesses generally, an analyst’s lack of proper training or deficiency in judgment may be disclosed in cross-examination,” Scalia adds.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy strongly opposes this interpretation of the Confrontation Clause claiming that the Court is haphazardly sweeping away a century of precedent for dealing with scientific evidence.
“The Confrontation Clause is not designed, and does not serve, to detect errors in scientific tests.” Justice Kennedy asserts. “That should instead be done by conducting a new test. Or, if a new test is impossible, the defendant may call his own expert to explain to the jury the test’s flaws and the dangers of relying on it. And if, in an extraordinary case, the particular analyst’s testimony is necessary to the defense, then, of course, the defendant may subpoena the analyst.”
The Court leaves it to individual states to establish a procedure for contesting lab reports and calling analysts to court, so it is difficult to tell what the full consequences of this decision will be and how it will be interpreted.
“The Court dictates to the States, as a matter of constitutional law, an as-yet-undefined set of rules governing what kinds of evidence may be admitted without in-court testimony. Indeed, under today’s opinion the States bear an even more onerous burden than they did before,” Justice Kennedy protests.
“There is no accepted definition of analyst, and there is no established precedent to define that term,” Justice Kennedy adds. “Consider how many people play a role in a routine test for the presence of illegal drugs. It is not at all evident which of these persons is the analyst to be confronted under the rule the Court announces today.”
Dean Gialamas, ASCLD President, says that though it is hard to know how Thursday’s ruling will be interpreted, “It will have an impact on crime labs, and it will be felt.”
Justice Kennedy fears that, “By requiring analysts also to appear in the far greater number of cases where defendants do not dispute the analyst’s result, the Court imposes enormous costs on the administration of justice.”
In the current fiscal climate with budget and personnel cuts, this decision could not have come at a worse time.
“[This ruling] will have a doubly detrimental effect,” Gialamas says. “Crime labs are losing positions and those existing will have an increased work load.” You can’t just hire people, Gialamas adds. “It would take 12 to 24 months to hire and train a new analyst, even if money were available.”
Justice Kennedy cites the sheer number of cases that an analyst works on each year. Even considering that 95% of cases end in plea bargain, he estimates that Philadelphia’s 18 drug analysts will be required to testify in more than 69 trials next year and Cleveland’s 6 drug analysts (two of whom work only part time) must testify in 117. Not to mention the 500 analysts at the FBI’s lab in Quantico who conduct over a million tests a year.
“The Court’s decision means that before any of those million tests reaches a jury, at least one of the laboratory’s analysts must board a plane, find his or her way to an unfamiliar courthouse, and sit there waiting to read aloud notes made months ago,” Justice Kennedy writes.
Justice Scalia dismisses these financial and logistical concerns in his ruling. “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. The Confrontation Clause—like those other constitutional provisions—is binding, and we may not disregard it at our convenience.”
