On the Horizon: U.S. Supreme Court to Decide Another Substitute Analyst Case

In a post here, I wrote about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bullcoming v. New Mexico, 131 S. Ct. 2705 (2011), holding that substitute analyst testimony in an impaired driving case violated Crawford. Bullcoming was no great surprise in light of the Court’s prior decision in Melendez-Diaz. However, less than one week after the Court issued its decision in Bullcoming, it granted certiorari in another substitute analyst case, Williams v. Illinois (No. 10-8505). Because of the underlying facts, Williams promises to be more significant than Bullcoming. In Williams, the defendant Sandy Williams was charged with, among things, sexual assault of L.J. After the incident in question L.J. was taken to the emergency room, where a doctor performed a vaginal exam and took vaginal swabs. The swabs and other evidence were sent to the Illinois State Police (ISP) Crime Lab for testing and analysis. An analyst confirmed the presence of semen in the swabs. About six months later, the defendant was arrested on unrelated charges and a blood sample was drawn from him pursuant to a court order. An analyst extracted a DNA profile from the sample and entered it into ISP Crime Lab database. Meanwhile, L.J.’s swabs from the earlier incident were sent to Cellmark Diagnostic Laboratory for DNA analysis. Cellmark returned the swabs to the ISP Crime Lab, having derived a DNA profile for the person whose semen was recovered from L.J. At trial, ISP forensic biologist Sandra Lambatos testified as an expert for the State. Lambatos indicated that [...]