Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-899_97be.pdf
Page Number: 8.0

Cite as:  602 U. S. ____ (2024) 

5 

Opinion of the Court 

“surrogate testimony,” the Court explained, “could not con-
vey what [the certifying analyst] knew or observed” about 
“the particular test and testing process he employed.”  Id., 
at 661.  Nor could that “testimony expose any lapses or lies 
on  the  certifying  analyst’s  part,”  or  offer  any  insight  into
whether  his  leave-without-pay  was  the  result  of  miscon-
duct.  Id., at 662.  Concluded the Court: “[W]hen the State 
elected to introduce [the] certification,” its author—and not 
any substitute—“became [the] witness [that the defendant] 
had the right to confront.”  Id., at 663. 

The very next Term brought another case in which one
lab  analyst  related  what  another  had  found—though  this
time on the way to stating her own conclusion.  In Williams 
v.  Illinois,  567  U. S.  50  (2012),  state  police  sent  vaginal
swabs from a rape victim known as L. J. to a private lab for 
DNA testing.  When the lab sent back a DNA profile, a state
analyst checked it against the police department’s database 
and  found  that  it  matched  the  profile  of  prior  arrestee
Sandy Williams.  The State charged Williams with the rape, 
and he went to trial.  The prosecution chose not to bring the 
private lab analyst to the stand.  Instead, it called Sandra 
Lambatos,  the  state  analyst  who  had  searched  the  police 
database  and  found  the  DNA  match.    Lambatos  had  no 
first-hand knowledge of how the private lab had produced 
its results; she did not even know whether those results ac-
tually came from L. J.’s vaginal swabs (as opposed to some
other sample).  But she spoke repeatedly about comparing
Williams’s  DNA  to  the  DNA  “found  in  [L. J.’s]  vaginal 
swabs.”  Id.,  at  61,  71  (plurality  opinion);  see  id.,  at  124 
(KAGAN, J.,  dissenting).  So  in  addition  to  describing  how 
she discovered a match, Lambatos became the conduit for 
what  a  different  analyst  had  reported—that  a  particular 
DNA profile came from L. J.’s vaginal swabs.  Williams ob-
jected, at trial and later: He thought that, just as in Bull-
coming, crucial evidence had been admitted through a sur-
rogate expert, thus violating his right of confrontation.