Opinion ID: 4239227
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Waiver of Right of Confrontation

Text: [¶13] That Jones has a constitutional right, as spelled out in Melendez-Diaz, to confront the State’s chemist at trial is not the end of the inquiry, however. As the Supreme Court and we have recognized on numerous occasions, a defendant may waive any right, including one of 10 constitutional dimension. See, e.g., Maryland v. Shatzer, 559 U.S. 98, 104 (2010); Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464 (1938); State v. Hill, 2014 ME 16, ¶ 5, 86 A.3d 628; State v. Ericson, 2011 ME 28, ¶ 15, 13 A.3d 777. “Waiver occurs when a defendant voluntarily, knowingly, and intentionally relinquishes or abandons a known right.” State v. True, 2017 ME 2, ¶ 14, 153 A.3d 106; see Shatzer, 559 U.S. at 104. Nevertheless, a waiver of a constitutional right need not be express in the record, State v. Murphy, 2015 ME 62, ¶ 21, 124 A.3d 647, and may instead be inferred based on the defendant’s conduct given the totality of the circumstances, Ericson, 2011 ME 28, ¶ 16, 13 A.3d 777. See Melendez-Diaz, 557 U.S. at 325-26 & n.10 (mentioning “forfeit[ure] by silence”); State v. Watson, 2006 ME 80, ¶ 27, 900 A.2d 702 (“As with the right to jury trial, the right to counsel may be waived by a defendant’s inaction.”); State v. Caulfield, 722 N.W.2d 304, 311 (Minn. 2016) (“[C]onfrontation rights are not among those . . . that require an affirmative waiver in writing or on the record.”). A defendant is also not relieved from complying with “established rules of procedure and evidence designed to assure both fairness and reliability in the ascertainment of guilt and innocence” just because there is a constitutional right at stake. Ericson, 2011 ME 28, ¶ 17, 13 A.3d 777 (quotation marks omitted). 11 [¶14] To verify that a defendant did voluntarily, knowingly, and intentionally relinquish a right, we review any express or implicit factual findings regarding such waiver for clear error, and we review de novo the legal conclusion based on those facts. Hill, 2014 ME 16, ¶ 5, 86 A.3d 628. Although it did not phrase it as such, the court in this matter essentially concluded that Jones waived her right to confront the State chemist when she failed to request a live witness at least ten days before trial. Because there is no factual dispute that Jones did not make any such request, the only issue before us is the legal conclusion that her failure to do so constitutes a voluntary, knowing, and intentional waiver. [¶15] In Melendez-Diaz, the Supreme Court recognized so-called “notice-and-demand statutes” as a means by which a defendant may waive Confrontation Clause rights. 557 U.S. at 326. The Court characterized notice-and-demand statutes, “[i]n their simplest form, [to] require the prosecution to provide notice to the defendant of its intent to use an analyst’s report as evidence at trial, after which the defendant is given a period of time in which he may object to the admission of the evidence absent the analyst’s appearance live at trial.” Id. The Supreme Court approved the use of such notice-and-demand statutes, reasoning that states are “free to adopt 12 procedural rules governing objections,” such statutes maintain the burden on the defendant to raise a timely Confrontation Clause objection, and “[t]here is no conceivable reason” why a defendant cannot be required to exercise her Confrontation Clause rights in advance of trial. Id. at 327 & n.12. [¶16] The State contends that section 1112 constitutes just such a statute, but Jones argues that the provision does not constitute the type of notice-and-demand statute that the Supreme Court sanctioned as a constitutional means for enforcing a defendant’s waiver of her Confrontation Clause rights because it does not require the State to inform a defendant of its intent to offer a certificate at trial in lieu of live testimony. [¶17] Although the Supreme Court did not purport to sanction every possible form of notice-and-demand statute, it did cite the notice-and-demand statutes of Georgia, Ohio, and Texas as examples of provisions that comply with Confrontation Clause requirements. Id. at 326, 327 n.12; see Ga. Code Ann. § 35-3-154.1 (LEXIS through 2017 Regular Sess. of the Gen. Assemb.); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2925.51 (LEXIS through legis. passed by the 132nd Gen. Assemb.); Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.41 (LEXIS through 2017 Regular 13 Sess. and 1st C.S., 85th Leg.). We review each of these three statutes deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court, and we compare them to section 1112.4 [¶18] Georgia’s statute provides that the prosecutor must serve the defendant with a copy of a lab report “prior to” trial. Ga. Code Ann. § 35-3-154.1(c)-(d). If the defendant objects in writing at least ten days before trial, the court “shall require” the witness to testify in person and the prosecution may not use the report as prima facie evidence of its contents. Ga. Code Ann. § 35-3-154.1(e). [¶19] Ohio’s notice-and-demand statute also provides that the prosecution must serve the defendant with a copy of the report “prior to” trial. Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2925.51(B). If the defendant serves on the prosecution a demand for live testimony within seven days after receipt of the report, the report may not be used as prima facie evidence of its contents. Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2925.51(C). [¶20] Similarly, Texas’s notice-and-demand statute provides that the prosecution must file the certificate of analysis with the court and serve it on 4 The complete text of each of the three statutes is reproduced in Appendix A to this opinion. 14 the defendant at least twenty days before trial.5 Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.41, § 4. The certificate is not admissible if the defendant files a written objection to the use of the certificate at least ten days before trial. Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.41, § 4. [¶21] In terms of notice, all three statutes share the requirement that the prosecutor provide the defendant with a copy of the certificate before trial.6 All three statutes require the prosecution to provide notice of the existence and contents of the report, and to serve the report on the defendant or her counsel before trial, but none specifically requires the prosecution to notify the defendant that it intends to use the report in lieu of live testimony 5 Texas’s notice-and-demand statute has been amended since Melendez-Diaz was issued in 2009, but those amendments do not affect the analysis undertaken in Melendez-Diaz or in the instant matter. See 2013 Tex. Gen. Laws 78 (West) (effective May 18, 2013). 6 Each of the statutes also contains minimum requirements for the contents of the report—e.g., the name of the analyst, that the laboratory is accredited, a summary of the analyst’s education and experience, and a description of the procedures used. Ga. Code Ann. § 35-3-154.1(b) (LEXIS through 2017 Regular Sess. of the Gen. Assemb.); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2925.51(A) (LEXIS through legis. passed by the 132nd Gen. Assemb.); Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.41, §§ 3, 5 (LEXIS through 2017 Regular Sess. and 1st C.S., 85th Leg.). The Supreme Court gave no hint, however, that the contents of the report itself are relevant to a Confrontation Clause analysis beyond the determination of whether the report is testimonial. See Melendez-Diaz, 557 U.S. at 310, 326-28. In any event, 17-A M.R.S. § 1112 shares the requirements that the certificate be signed and sworn to by a person qualified to issue such results according to Department of Health and Human Services certification standards, and that the analysis was conducted using “a method designed to accurately determine the composition of the substance.” Section 1112 is therefore indistinguishable on this basis. 15 at trial.7 Ga. Code Ann. § 35-3-154.1(c); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2925.51(B); Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.41, § 4. Further, Georgia requires service on the defendant only “prior to” trial, even though it also requires the defendant to demand a live witness within a certain number of days (ten days) before trial.8 Ga. Code Ann. § 35-3-154.1(c), (e); see Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2925.51(B) (requiring service on the defendant “prior to” trial). [¶22] Unlike the notice-and-demand statutes of Georgia, Ohio, and Texas, section 1112 does not require the State to serve the defendant with a copy of the certificate of analysis, but another Maine provision— M.R.U. Crim. P. 16—does require the State to provide a copy to the defendant. Rule 16 requires the State to provide automatic discovery to the defendant, including “[a]ny reports or statements of experts, made in connection with the particular case, including results of . . . scientific tests, experiments, or comparisons.” M.R.U. Crim. P. 16(a)(2)(G). For a Class B offense such as the 7 All three comparison statutes set the timeline for service of the report according to the proximity to trial; Georgia requires that it must be served on the defendant “prior to the first proceeding in which the report is to be used against the defendant,” Ga. Code Ann. § 35-3-154.1(c) (LEXIS through 2017 Regular Sess. of the Gen. Assemb.); Ohio requires that it must be served “prior to any proceeding in which the report is to be used against the accused,” Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2925.51(B) (LEXIS through legis. passed by the 132nd Gen. Assemb.); and Texas requires that it must be served “[n]ot later than the 20th day before the trial begins in a proceeding in which a certificate of analysis under this article is to be introduced,” Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.41, § 4 (LEXIS through 2017 Regular Sess. and 1st C.S., 85th Leg.). 8 Texas requires the prosecution to serve the report on the defendant at least twenty days before trial. Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.41, § 4. 16 one with which Jones was charged, the State must provide such materials at the initial appearance or arraignment, or within fourteen days after that material “comes within the possession or control of the attorney for the State.”9 M.R.U. Crim. P. 16(b)(1), (3)-(5). [¶23] Although it is true that section 1112 does not require the State to notify the defendant that it intends to introduce the certificate in lieu of live testimony, neither do the notice-and-demand statutes of Georgia, Ohio, and Texas. Defendant’s argument that she was unaware that the State intended to use the certificate, despite having received a copy of it in discovery, therefore provides no support for her contention that section 1112 is facially unconstitutional. [¶24] Thus, section 1112, in combination with Rule 16, provides a defendant in Maine with precisely the same notice and within at least the same time constraints as the Georgia and Ohio statutes.10 9 Jones does not argue that the State violated the automatic discovery requirements of M.R.U. Crim. P. 16. 10 There is no reason to distinguish section 1112 from the others we discuss based on the fact that the notice requirement derives from rule rather than statute. In Colorado, for example, the notice-and-demand statute contains no mention of the notice the prosecutor is to provide the defendant regarding its use of a lab report at trial, but requires the defendant to request live testimony at least fourteen days before trial. Colo. Rev. Stat. § 16-3-309(5) (LEXIS through 71st Gen. Assemb.). The Colorado Supreme Court held that its statute was constitutional notwithstanding Melendez-Diaz, reasoning that “providing the defense with a forensic lab report through discovery is sufficient to put the defendant on notice that, absent a specific request under [the notice-and-demand statute], the report can be introduced without live testimony.” Cropper v. 17 [¶25] In terms of demand, Georgia and Texas share the requirement that the defendant object in writing to the admission of the report at least ten days before trial.11 Ga. Code Ann. § 35-3-154.1(e); Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.41, § 4. Maine’s demand provision is indistinguishable; section 1112 requires the defendant to provide at least ten days’ written notice to the prosecution that she requests a live witness to testify regarding the analysis results.12 17-A M.R.S. § 1112(1). People, 251 P.3d 434, 434-37 (Colo. 2011). In Iowa as well, the notice-and-demand statute requires that the county attorney must provide a copy of any such lab results “whether or not such findings are to be used in evidence against the accused person,” Iowa Code Ann. § 691.4 (LEXIS through legis. from the 2017 Regular Sess. of the 87th Gen. Assemb.), just as M.R.U. Crim. P. 16(a)(1) requires disclosure of such discovery without regard for its intended use at trial. Similarly, in South Carolina, the admissibility of lab reports is set out entirely by rule rather than statute. S.C. R. Crim. P. 6. 11 Ohio requires that the accused demand a live witness within seven days after receipt of the report. Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2925.51(C) (LEXIS through legis. passed by the 132nd Gen. Assemb.). 12 The fact that the State identified a chemist on its witness list did not absolve Jones of her responsibility to assert her Confrontation Clause rights in a timely fashion. See Cropper, 251 P.3d at 437-48 & nn.5-6 (“Regardless of any representations that the prosecution made that the technician would testify, [the defendant] had notice of the presence of the report and had an adequate opportunity to assert [the defendant’s] confrontation rights and request that the technician be present for cross-examination.”); see also Jones v. State, No. CACR11-19, 2011 Ark. App. LEXIS 724, at  (Ark. Ct. App. Nov. 9, 2011) (“Appellant cites no authority for his argument that he was excused from the notice requirement because the analyst appeared on the prosecution’s witness list.”). Nevertheless, to avoid the need for a defendant in every case to make a prophylactic request for a live witness, the best practice is for the State to inform the defendant at the dispositional conference whether it intends to call the chemist as a witness or rely on the lab certificate alone. See M.R.U. Crim. P. 18. Further, although section 1112 contains no time frame for the State’s obligation to provide the certificate to the defendant, Rule 16 does. The State’s failure to provide the certificate in compliance with Rule 16 may result in a sanction for violation of the discovery rule or, at a minimum, a continuance of trial to allow the defendant to timely request that the State produce a witness. See M.R.U. Crim. P. 16(e); State v. Carr, 2012 ME 136, ¶ 9, 58 A.3d 1102; see also Iowa Code Ann. § 691.4 (stating that if the county attorney does not provide a copy of the report at least four days before trial, “such fact shall be grounds for a continuance”). 18 [¶26] We conclude that section 1112 is legally indistinguishable from the notice-and-demand statutes that the Supreme Court in Melendez-Diaz specifically deemed constitutional on Confrontation Clause grounds. We therefore decline Jones’s request to declare section 1112 facially unconstitutional on this basis.13 Jones’s failure to timely demand a live witness pursuant to section 1112 effected a voluntary, knowing, and intentional waiver of her known Confrontation Clause rights, and the court 13 Nor are we persuaded by the State’s argument that a defendant waives her right of confrontation by failing to indicate that she has a “genuine intention to challenge the conclusions contained in the report of an analyst.” Specifically, the State points out that Jones “did not provide the trial court with an offer of proof that the drugs in questions were not methamphetamine, that the State’s chemist was not competent, used flawed science to test the drugs, or that in some way the live testimony of the chemist would be expected to be compromised.” This argument rests on a misreading of Melendez-Diaz. In its opinion, the Supreme Court expressly declined to discuss the constitutionality of notice-and-demand statutes that require a defendant’s good cause for demanding a live witness. 557 U.S. at 327 n.12. The Supreme Court’s discussion of the Confrontation Clause is also devoid of any mention of the defendant’s duty to mount an actual challenge to the testimony in question. See id. at 309-11; see also State v. Laturner, 218 P.3d 23, 32-40 (Kan. 2009) (invalidating that portion of Kansas’s former notice-and-demand statute that required the defendant to demonstrate the grounds for his objection to the admission of a certificate in lieu of live testimony and his intent to actually cross-examine the witness at trial); City of Reno v. Howard, 318 P.3d 1063, 1064 (Nev. 2014) (declaring that the Nevada statute’s “substantial-and-bona-fide-dispute requirement impermissibly burdens the right to confront the declarant”). It is the defendant’s right to cross-examine, not her actual intent to do so, that is the crux of the Confrontation Clause. See Melendez-Diaz, 557 U.S. at 309. Furthermore, section 1112 contains no requirement that the defendant demonstrate the nature or extent of her anticipated challenge to lab analysis results to justify her request for the live testimony of the chemist, and we decline to impute one into the statute. Rather than making enforcement of Confrontation Clause rights dependent on the defendant’s intent to mount a genuine challenge to the live witness’s testimony, the Supreme Court has simply encouraged patience—“[W]e do not cast aspersions on trial judges, who we trust will not be antagonized by good-faith requests for analysts’ appearance at trial”—and discouraged inefficiency—“We simply do not expect defense attorneys to believe that their clients’ interests (or their own) are furthered by objections to analysts’ reports whose conclusions counsel have no intention of challenging.” Id. at 328 n.13. 19 therefore did not err by allowing the State to introduce at trial the chemist’s certificate in lieu of live testimony. The entry is: Judgment affirmed. John W. Tebbetts, Esq. (orally), Presque Isle, for appellant Macie Jones John M. Pluto, Asst. Dist. Atty. (orally), Prosecutorial District No. 8, Caribou, for appellee State of Maine Aroostook County Unified Criminal Docket docket number CR-2016-106 FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY 20 APPENDIX A Ga. Code Ann. § 35-3-154.1 (LEXIS through 2017 Regular Sess. of the Gen. Assemb.) § 35-3-154.1. Admission of reports from state crime laboratory (a) A copy of a report of the methods and findings of any examination or analysis conducted by an employee of the state crime laboratory or an employee of a laboratory with which the state crime laboratory has a contract for the provision of laboratory or scientific examination or analysis, authenticated under oath, is prima-facie evidence in court proceedings in this state of the facts contained therein. (b) The report shall have the effect as if the person who performed the analysis or examination had personally testified and shall have an affidavit of the employee stating: (1) That he or she is certified to perform the requisite analysis or examination; (2) His or her experience as a chemist or analyst and as an expert witness testifying in court; and (3) That he or she conducted the tests shown on the report using procedures approved by the bureau and the report accurately reflects his or her opinion regarding the results. (c) The prosecuting attorney shall serve a copy on the defendant’s attorney of record, or on the defendant if pro se, prior to the first proceeding in which the report is to be used against the defendant. (d) Any report under this Code section shall contain notice of the right to demand the testimony of the person signing the report. (e) The defendant may object in writing any time after service of the report, but at least ten days prior to trial, to the introduction of the 21 report. If objection is made, the judge shall require the employee to be present to testify. The state shall diligently investigate the witness’s availability and report to the court. If the witness is not available on a timely basis, the court shall grant a continuance.