Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Supreme Court grants cert in Bullcoming v New Mexico

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted cert in Bullcoming v New Mexico. This case is worth watching.
The issue: Whether the Confrontation clause permits the prosecution to introduce testimonial statements of a non-testifying forensic analyst through the in-court testimony of a supervisor or other person who did not perform or observe the lab0ratory analysis described in the statements.

The New Mexico Court had determined:
" Although the blood alcohol report was testimonial, we conclude that its admission did not violate the Confrontation Clause, because the analyst who prepared the report was a mere scrivener who simply transcribed the results generated by a gas chromatograph machine and, therefore, the live, in-court testimony of another qualified analyst was sufficient to satisfy Defendant's right to confrontation.

In almost all Tennessee cases, the analyst who wrote the report testifies about the report. The exceptions I recall two exceptions. One occurred when the supervisor came to testify after an analyst moved out of State with cases pending. The second occurred when the lab analyst had to be in Knox County and Hamilton County for trials on the same day. A supervisor came and testified in Hamilton County. Hopefully, the Court will recognize that the test is performed by the gas chromatograph. The human, forensic analyst simply writes down what was found by the instrument. We will have to wait and see.

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