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Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.law.umich.edu/articles Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, Courts Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Evidence Commons, and the Supreme Court of the United States Commons Recommended Citation Friedman, Richard D. "The Sky is Still Not Falling." J. L. & Pol. 20, no. 2 (2012): 427-42.
THE SKY IS STILL NOT FALLING Richard D. Friedman* Crawford v. Washington' dramatically transformed the law governing the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, and much for the better. Under the old regime associated with Ohio v. Roberts,2 the Clause was little more than a constitutionalization of the modern law of hearsay, incorporating its multiple particular oddities and also a general principle that the law poses no obstacle to admission of an outof-court statement that is deemed by the courts to be reliable. This doctrine bore no relation to the text or history of the Confrontation Clause. It reflected no principle worthy of respect-and in part as a result, it was highly manipulable. Crawford, by contrast, articulated a simple and robust principle that is apparent on the face of the Clause and in its history, and is a central element of our system of criminal adjudication: A witness against an accused must (unless the accused waives or forfeits the right) give her testimony in the presence of the accused, subject to cross-examination. Ordinarily, she must do so at trial. If she is unavailable to testify then, however, the accused's confrontation right will be satisfied if she gave her testimony on some prior occasion at which he had the opportunity to be confronted by her and cross-examine her. Crawford, by razing the old structure of Confrontation Clause doctrine, left many open questions. Chief among these was the standard for determining whether an out-of-court statement that is later offered against an accused should be deemed to be testimonial-that is, whether the person who made * Alene and Allan F. Smith Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004). 2 Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56 (1980).
The key case was Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts,' which held that, at least as a general matter, forensic laboratory reports are testimonial for purposes of the Confrontation Clause. I regarded that basic holding as quite obvious-it was, as Justice Scalia's opinion for the majority said, a "rather straightforward application" of Crawford. But four justices, led by Justice Kennedy, dissented, and they, together with Massachusetts and its supporting amici (including the United States, thirty-five states, the District of Columbia, the National District Attorneys Association, and numerous local prosecutors), raised a flurry of arguments in opposition. This gave Justice Scalia a chance to clear away a good deal of underbrush, as one by one-quite correctly-he set these arguments aside. * A lab report is ordinarily not accusatory. That does not matter-the Confrontation Clause is not limited to accusatory statements. Such a limitation would eviscerate the right, because in many cases there is no witness who can testify that she observed the accused committing a crime. result, the only way the Court could accommodate the powerful, and understandable, impulse to admit Covington's statement was to hold that the statement was non-testimonial. This means that the Confrontation Clause would pose no obstacle to admission of the statement, even if Covington had survived and was living around the corner from the courthouse at the time of trial. Bryant, 131 S. Ct. at 1167-68. ' Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S. Ct. 2527, 2532 (2009).
already complied with the constitutional rule it required, and those states had not been led to ruin. The majority opinion in Melendez-Diaz was quite wonderful. Point by point, it swept aside potential obstructions to the confrontation right that should never have been erected. But I confess that I found it disappointing in two respects. One was that the opinion secured only five votes-and the four dissenters seemed so ready to undercut Crawford severely, largely because of misguided concern that the practical consequences of the decision would be intolerable. The other respect was perhaps less to my credit. At the time, I had a petition for certiorari pending in Briscoe v. Virginia. The petition contended that Virginia did not satisfy the Confrontation Clause in providing that a lab certificate could be admissible but the accused could present the analyst as his own witness. The Melendez-Diaz decision, it appeared clear, had just resolved this issue in our favor-great news for my clients, but apparently precluding my hopes of arguing the issue in the Supreme Court. I, like most observers, expected that the Court would, as a matter of course, remand Briscoe to the Virginia Supreme Court for reconsideration in light of Melendez-Diaz. It was startling, therefore, when four days later the Court instead simply granted certiorari. There was widespread speculation that the four dissenters had decided to take Briscoe in hopes of undercutting Melendez-Diaz. The speculation gained credence from the fact that Justice David Souter, a member of the majority, had announced his retirement and his prospective successor, Sonia Sotomayor, was a former prosecutor.' Once again, state-side amici-including the United States, a majority of the states, and the District of Columbia-raised the catastrophic consequences that would occur if the defendant's position prevailed. But at the argument, it became quite clear that Justice Sotomayor was not about to undermine a sevenmonth-old precedent. Two weeks later, the Court did what ' During oral argument in Briscoe, Justice Scalia lent additional force to the speculation, suggesting that the Court had taken the case for no reason other than to consider overruling Melendez-Diaz. Transcript of Oral Argument at 58, Briscoe v. Virginia, 130 S. Ct. 1316 (2010) (No. 0711191).
observers had expected it to do in the first place, remanding the case for proceedings consistent with Melendez-Diaz.' But, of course, the matter did not rest there. Nine months later, the Court granted certiorari in Bullcoming v. New Mexico. The Court's makeup had shifted again-Justice Kagan had replaced Justice Stevens, a member of the Melendez-Diaz majority. In Bullcoming, unlike Melendez-Diaz and Briscoe, the prosecution had presented a live witness from the laboratory, rather than simply the report. But the witness was not the analyst who had performed the test and prepared the report, for he had been placed on unpaid administrative leave. I thought this case was extremely easy-after all, in his Melendez-Diaz dissent, Justice Kennedy noted that the Court had made clear that it "will not permit the testimonial statement of one witness to enter into evidence through the in-court testimony of a second . . . ."
Perhaps for that reason, the United States did not appear as amicus in support of the state. But thirty-three states did, as well as organizations of prosecutors and medical examiners, and once again they focused on the practical consequences that would follow if the author of the report had to testify live. Nevertheless, I hoped that some or all of the Melendez-Diaz dissenters would acknowledge that the Court had decided that forensic lab reports are testimonial statements, and that it obviously followed that a surrogate witness could not testify as to the contents of a lab report stating events and results that the surrogates had not observed. In the end, Justice Kagan stayed with the majority, which once again-this time in an opinion by Justice Ginsburg-treated the case as virtually a foregone conclusion. But the bloc of four dissenters remained intact. Once again, Justice Kennedy took the lead, and this time some of his language seemed to indicate that he was ready to throw out the entire Crawford framework and return to something like that of Roberts.
' Briscoe, 130 S. Ct. at 1316. 9 Melendez-Diaz, 129 S. Ct. at 2546 (Kennedy, J., dissenting).
City Office of Chief Medical Examiner as Amici Curiae Supporting Respondents, Williams v. Illinois, 131 S. Ct. 3090 (2011) (No. 10-8505), 2011 WL 5125054 [hereinafter New York Brief].
that the brief is in large part an attempt to scare the Supreme Court into thinking that if Williams wins this case, prosecution use of DNA and some other types of forensic evidence will become unfeasible. That is simply not true." The New York brief builds on the fact that DNA testing involves several different stages. It suggests that if Williams prevails, a prosecutor wishing to present DNA evidence would have to bring to court one witness for each stage. But that is not so. At the outset, bear in mind that the Confrontation Clause requires the presence at trial only of those persons who make testimonial statements that are in some way conveyed to the trier of fact. I use this phrasing because the Clause may be invoked even if the prosecutor does not formally introduce the statement. Consider the stages of DNA testing as described in the New York brief: (a) Examination: A technician "examines the sample and takes cuttings for DNA extraction.,12 There is no testimonial statement-or any statement at all-in this process; examining and cutting do not constitute a statement. (b) Extraction: A technician adds reagents to the sample. Again, the process does not involve a statement. (c) Quantitation: A technician measures the amount of DNA. Presumably this technician reports that amount. But even assuming for purposes of argument that this report is a testimonial statement, there is no need for it to be presented to the trier of fact. The witness who reports on the profile found in the later part of the process does not have to convey it to the trier of fact, or even rely in her own testimony on the results of this stage. We know from the fact that, by hypothesis, a DNA profile was ultimately found that there was enough DNA to perform " The discussion here is drawn in large part from an entry I posted on the Confrontation Blog. Richard D. Friedman, Thoughts on the Brief of the New York DA and OCME in Williams, CONFRONTATION BLOG (Dec. 5, 2011, 3:27 PM), http://confrontationright.blogspot.com/2011/12/thoughts-onbrief-of-new-york-da-and.html. 12 New York Brief, supra note 10, at 7.
the analysis. Put another way: The quantitation stage is a screen, used to determine whether the process should continue; once the process does continue, neither subsequent analysts nor the trier of fact need rely on the results of this stage. (d) Amplification: A technician copies specific portions of the DNA to raise them to sufficient levels for testing. Once more, performance of this test is not a statement, let alone a testimonial statement. (e) Electrophoresis: Here, at last, we have the performance of the test that yields the numbers and graph from which a DNA profile may be deduced. The printout of the machinery used to perform the test is not in itself a testimonial statement. But presumably the printout bears identifying information that was entered by a human, and (assuming the test was clearly performed for forensic purposes) that should be a testimonial statement. If, as in Williams, an analyst at the lab deduces the profile of interest and prepares a report presenting that profile, that report is a testimonial statement, and thus provides the essential information that the prosecution needs." Even assuming Williams wins and some labs continue to adhere to the procedure described by the New York brief, the Confrontation Clause would, at least presumptively, say nothing about most of the technicians involved in that procedure. As a check on this, try this thought experiment: Assume for the moment that Williams wins his case. Would the signatories to the New York brief contend in subsequent cases that all the technicians in the procedure they have described have to testify for DNA test results to be admissible? Not very likely. Now, I have included the "at least presumptively" qualification in the last paragraph because I have not yet said anything about chain of custody. So long as a witness speaks only about what she knows from personal knowledge, chain of custody is not a confrontation problem per se. Melendez-Diaz makes clear that, as an initial matter, it is up to the prosecution to decide what witness's statements it wishes to present to " Friedman, supra note 11.
establish the chain of custody.14 If the gaps in the chain are too great, there may be insufficient proof, and at some point that could be a due process violation. It may be, depending on what procedures the laboratory used to tag the sample and maintain identification throughout the procedure, that to prevent such a violation, the prosecution would have to present one or more additional witnesses. But reasonable inferences can bridge even some substantial gaps. I do not believe the sample needs to have been sitting still during those gaps; technicians may have performed procedures on it other than letting it change naturally over time. Consider also that, given the sensitivity of modem methods of DNA testing, in most cases if the prosecution would have difficulty bringing to court the lab witnesses necessary to prove the results of a given test, it can simply ask for the sample to be retested. This could be done perhaps by a single witness who can easily come to court. Note, for example, that only one technician from the Illinois State Police lab did the test on the blood sample taken from Williams. Retesting would not be necessary in the vast majority of cases, because so few cases go to trial, but the availability of this option reduces the overall burden on the state enormously. The Illinois test in Williams serves as a reminder that the Sixth Amendment does not incorporate the Cellmark protocol. Much of the New York brief seems to suggest that Confrontation Clause jurisprudence must take as given procedures such as those used by Cellmark in Williams and described by the brief. But other labs, like the one in Illinois, use different procedures. For example, the Michigan State Police lab rarely involves more than three people in a given DNA test." Is such vertical integration less efficient than an assembly-line procedure? Perhaps. But the standard for constitutionality cannot be the procedure that would be optimal when the constitutional rights of the accused are disregarded.
See Melendez-Diaz, 129 S. Ct. at 2532 n.1. Interview with John Collins, Director, Mich. State Police Lab. (Jan.
but, though occasionally such arguments are meritorious,28 courts should generally approach them with considerable skepticism. Even putting aside such relatively innovative responses as remote testimony and greatly expanded use of depositions, the bottom line remains: States that have conscientiously protected the accused's confrontation rights-allowing him to demand that a lab witness must testify subject to confrontation if she has made a testimonial statement that is conveyed to the trier of fact-have not found the burden intolerable. There is no reason to suppose that the other states would find adherence to the Melendez-Diaz line so much more difficult if they tried it. Instead of putting their energy into trying to undercut the Melendez-Diaz doctrine, attorneys general, local prosecutors, and other prosecution-related government agencies should do what they can to make the doctrine work effectively. Some good prosecutors have taken this approach virtually from the beginning.29 I hope many more now join them.
" In a recent case not involving a lab witness, the Illinois Supreme Court held that a prior opportunity for cross-examination was inadequate in the circumstances because defense counsel lacked sufficient information. People v. Torres, No. 111302, 2012 WL 312119, at *14 (Ill. Feb. 2, 2012). 29 See, e.g., Patrick M. Haggan, Chief Trial Counsel, Suffolk Cnty. Dist. Attorney's Office, Remarks at the New England School of Law Symposium: Confronting Forensic Evidence: Implications of Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts and Briscoe v. Virginia (Nov. 13, 2009), available at http://www.nesl.edu/students/ne-joumal-symposia-audio_2009.cfm. Many of you may expect me to get up here today and say that, "the sky is falling, this is horrible, this is horrible, we cannot do justice." Well, I'm here to say quite the opposite .
efforts that have been made since the Melendez-Diaz decision, I can say that I think it's going to work out, and I think especially .
our state and hopefully all states in the country are going to be able to deal with Melendez-Diaz in an efficient, appropriate and just way, to hold those accountable but also to afford the constitutional rights to all defendants. Id. Suffolk County includes the city of Boston, where Melendez-Diaz itself arose.
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