The court of appeals released a new batch of opinions today. I may post on others eventually, but the one that jumped out at me immediately is State v. Brennan. Brennan is a Confrontation Clause case. Most readers of this blog know that Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), breathed new life into the Clause, and that Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S. Ct. 2527 (2009), held that a laboratory analyst's report is "testimonial" within the meaning of Crawford. Such a report, therefore, generally can't be admitted without the analyst's testimony, unless the defendant waives his right to confront the analyst. Sometimes, when an analyst is unavailable, the state will attempt to use a substitute analyst to admit the report, or at least, the conclusion reached by the original analyst. The use of a substitute analyst was approved in State v. Mobley, which my colleague Jessie Smith unpacked here. The substitute analyst in Mobley testified about DNA evidence that linked the defendant to a rape. Her opinion was based in part on, and it appears that she testified about, the original analyst's work, but the court of appeals found that her testimony did not violate the Confrontation Clause. It observed that she had conducted a "technical review" of the original analyst's work that the court seemed to think was fairly detailed, including an examination of the original data. Thus, the court held, the original analyst's conclusions were just a part of the basis for the substitute analyst's opinion. It was the [...]
Faculty Coordinators
