Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-899_97be.pdf
Page Number: 2

2 

SMITH v. ARIZONA 

Syllabus 

statements were introduced not for their truth, but to explain the basis
for the testifying expert’s opinion.  Five Members of the Court rejected 
that reasoning.  But because one of those five affirmed the state court 
on alternative grounds, Williams lost.

This case presents the same question on which the Court fractured 
in Williams.  Arizona law enforcement officers found petitioner Jason 
Smith with a large quantity of what appeared to be drugs and drug-
related items.  Smith was charged with various drug offenses, and the 
State sent the seized items to a crime lab for scientific analysis.  Ana-
lyst Elizabeth Rast ran forensic tests on the items and concluded that 
they  contained  usable  quantities  of  methamphetamine,  marijuana,
and cannabis.  Rast prepared a set of typed notes and a signed report
about  the  testing.    The  State  originally  planned  for  Rast  to  testify
about those matters at Smith’s trial, but Rast stopped working at the 
lab prior to trial.  So the State substituted another analyst, Greggory
Longoni, to “provide an independent opinion on the drug testing per-
formed by Elizabeth Rast.”  At trial, Longoni conveyed to the jury what 
Rast’s  records  revealed  about  her  testing,  before  offering  his  “inde-
pendent  opinion”  of  each  item’s  identity.    Smith  was  convicted.  On 
appeal, he argued that the State’s use of a substitute expert to convey 
the  substance  of  Rast’s  materials  violated  his  Confrontation  Clause 
rights.  The Arizona Court of Appeals rejected Smith’s challenge, hold-
ing that Longoni could constitutionally present his own expert opin-
ions based on his review of Rast’s work because her statements were 
then used only to show the basis of his opinion and not to prove their 
truth. 

Held: When an expert conveys an absent analyst’s statements in support
of the expert’s opinion, and the statements provide that support only 
if true, then the statements come into evidence for their truth.  Pp. 11– 
22. 

(a) The parties agree that Smith’s confrontation claim can succeed 
only  if  Rast’s  statements  came  into  evidence  for  their  truth.    Smith 
argues that the condition is satisfied here because her statements were 
conveyed, via Longoni’s testimony, to establish that what she said hap-
pened in the lab did in fact happen.  The State contends that Rast’s 
statements  came  into  evidence  not  for  their  truth,  but  to  “show  the 
basis” of Longoni’s independent opinion.  It emphasizes that Arizona’s
Rules of Evidence authorize the admission of such statements for that 
limited  purpose.    Evidentiary  rules,  however,  do  not  control  the  in-
quiry  into  whether  a  statement  is  admitted  for  its  truth.    Instead, 
courts must conduct an independent analysis of that question. 

Truth  is  everything  when  it  comes  to  the  kind  of  basis  testimony
presented here.  If an expert conveys an out-of-court statement in sup-
port  of  his  opinion,  and  the  statement  supports  that  opinion  only  if