Opinion ID: 2363213
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Did the Admission of the Chemist's Report Violate the Confrontation Clause?

Text: In offering the DEA chemist's report in evidence at appellant's trial without calling the chemist to testify, the prosecution relied on a statute enacted twenty-five years ago for the purpose of reliev[ing] . . . chemist[s] responsible for analyzing controlled substances from the necessity of appearing at trial when the chain of custody and the results of the analysis are not in dispute. Council of the District of Columbia, Committee on the Judiciary, Report on Bill 4-123, D.C. Uniform Controlled Substances Act of 1981, at 37 (Apr. 8, 1981). To achieve that purpose, the statute, D.C.Code § 48-905.06 (formerly D.C.Code § 33-556), provides as follows: In a proceeding for a violation of this chapter, the official report of chain of custody and of analysis of a controlled substance performed by a chemist charged with an official duty to perform such analysis, when attested to by that chemist and by the officer having legal custody of the report and accompanied by a certificate under seal that the officer has legal custody, shall be admissible in evidence as evidence of the facts stated therein and the results of that analysis. A copy of the certificate must be furnished upon demand by the defendant or his or her attorney in accordance with the rules of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia or, if no demand is made, no later than 5 days prior to trial. In the event that the defendant or his or her attorney subpoenas the chemist for examination, the subpoena shall be without fee or cost and the examination shall be as on cross-examination. It was not long before the constitutional issue raised by this statute came before us. The appellant in Howard, supra, was convicted of possessing and distributing heroin. On appeal, he contended that the admission against him in the government's case-in-chief of a DEA chemist's written report in lieu of the chemist's live testimony violated his Sixth Amendment right to be confronted by the witnesses against him. Relying on Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), which instructed that the Confrontation Clause allows the court to admit an unavailable witness's out-of-court statement against a defendant so long as the statement bears adequate `indicia of reliability,' [8] we rejected appellant's claim. We found no Sixth Amendment violation because the chemist's reports, which we said were properly admitted pursuant to both D.C.Code § 33-556 and the business record exception to the rule against hearsay, [9] were sufficiently trustworthy to satisfy the purpose of the Confrontation Clause. Howard, 473 A.2d at 839. [10] Although the chemist in Howard actually was available to testify in person, we excused his absence, citing a statement in Roberts that the usual prerequisite of the declarant's unavailability may be relaxed where the utility of trial confrontation is perceived to be remote. Id.; see Roberts, 448 U.S. at 65 n. 7, 100 S.Ct. 2531 (citing Dutton v. Evans, 400 U.S. 74, 91 S.Ct. 210, 27 L.Ed.2d 213 (1970)). Indeed, we reasoned, the fact that the chemist was available effectively preserved the defendant's right of confrontation because the defendant was free to subpoena the chemist himself. Howard, 473 A.2d at 839. The reliability-based test of Roberts for determining whether the Sixth Amendment requires confrontation thus was the principal foundation of our decision in Howard. That foundation was removed when the Supreme Court overruled Roberts in Crawford. In light of that overruling, Howard's constitutional holding no longer can be considered binding precedent. See Kleinbart v. United States, 604 A.2d 861, 870 (D.C.1992) (When intervening constitutional rulings necessitate a change in prior law, a division of this court is empowered to recognize that earlier decisions no longer have force.); see also Allison v. United States, 623 A.2d 590, 592 (D.C.1993) (To the extent that its [constitutional law] decisions may be inconsistent with ours, we must defer to the Supreme Court. . . .). Crawford requires us to consider afresh whether the Confrontation Clause permits the prosecution to introduce a DEA chemist's report against a defendant without calling the chemist in its case-in-chief. In Crawford, the Supreme Court revised its Confrontation Clause jurisprudence to reflect more accurately the original understanding of the Clause. 541 U.S. at 60, 124 S.Ct. 1354. In so doing, the Court held that testimonial statements of witnesses absent from trial may be admitted against a criminal defendant  only where the declarant is unavailable, and only where the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the declarant. Id. at 59, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (emphasis added); see also id. at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (Where testimonial evidence is at issue, however, the Sixth Amendment demands what the common law required: unavailability and a prior opportunity for cross-examination.). The Court squarely rejected the alternative Roberts approach, which allows a jury to hear evidence, untested by the adversary process, based on a mere judicial determination of reliability. Id. at 62, 100 S.Ct. 2531. As the Court explained: Where testimonial statements are involved, we do not think the Framers meant to leave the Sixth Amendment's protection to the vagaries of the rules of evidence, much less to amorphous notions of reliability. . . . Admitting statements deemed reliable by a judge is fundamentally at odds with the right of confrontation. To be sure, the Clause's ultimate goal is to ensure reliability of evidence, but it is a procedural rather than a substantive guarantee. It commands, not that evidence be reliable, but that reliability be assessed in a particular manner: by testing in the crucible of cross-examination. . . . Dispensing with confrontation because testimony is obviously reliable is akin to dispensing with jury trial because a defendant is obviously guilty. This is not what the Sixth Amendment prescribes. Id. at 61-62, 100 S.Ct. 2531. With its declaration that the Confrontation Clause is not subject to the vagaries of the rules of evidence, the Court also rejected the proposition, embraced in Roberts, that the right of confrontation is limited by firmly rooted exceptions to the hearsay rule. The text of the Sixth Amendment does not suggest any open-ended exceptions from the confrontation requirement to be developed by the courts. 541 U.S. at 54, 124 S.Ct. 1354. While several hearsay exceptions had become established before 1791, when the Sixth Amendment was adopted, the Court found scant evidence that such exceptions ever were invoked to admit testimonial statements against the accused in a criminal case. Id. at 56, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (emphasis in original). [11] Rather, as the Court observed, Most of the hearsay exceptions covered statements that by their nature were not testimonial  for example, business records or statements in furtherance of a conspiracy. We do not infer from these that the Framers thought exceptions would apply even to prior testimony. Id. See also Davis v. Washington, ___ U.S. ___, 126 S.Ct. 2266, 165 L.Ed.2d 224 (2006) (holding that testimonial statements are subject to the requirements of the Confrontation Clause even if they are otherwise admissible under the hearsay exception for excited utterances). In short, as the Court succinctly stated in Davis:  Roberts condition[ed] the admissibility of all hearsay evidence on whether it falls under a `firmly rooted hearsay exception' or bears `particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.' Crawford, 541 U.S. at 60, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (quoting Roberts, 448 U.S. at 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531). We overruled Roberts in Crawford by restoring the unavailability and cross-examination requirements. 126 S.Ct. at 2275 n. 4. Thus, Crawford announced a per se rule: the Confrontation Clause bars the government from introducing testimonial statements at trial against a criminal defendant without calling the declarant to testify in person, unless the declarant is unavailable and the defendant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the declarant, regardless of how reliable the testimonial evidence is perceived to be or whether it fits within a recognized hearsay exception (other than, possibly, the exception for dying declarations, see Crawford, 541 U.S. at 56 n. 6, 124 S.Ct. 1354). A critical portion of this holding . . . is the phrase `testimonial statements.' Davis, 126 S.Ct. at 2273. In Davis the Court answered a question left open in Crawford and held that only testimonial statements cause the declarant to be a `witness' within the meaning of the Confrontation Clause. Id. It is the testimonial character of the statement that separates it from other hearsay that, while subject to traditional limitations upon hearsay evidence, is not subject to the Confrontation Clause. Id. Whether it was error to admit the DEA chemist's report at appellant's trial turns, therefore, on whether the report was testimonial. While the Supreme Court has declined to spell out a comprehensive definition of `testimonial' suitable for all cases, Crawford, 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354, it has furnished ample guidance for present purposes. As the Court said in Crawford, looking to both history and constitutional text, the Confrontation Clause applies to `witnesses' against the accused  in other words, those who `bear testimony.' Id. at 51, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (citation omitted). And [t]estimony, the Court noted, is typically `[a] solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact.' Id. (citation omitted). So, for example, [a]n accuser who makes a formal statement to government officers bears testimony in a sense that a person who makes a casual remark to an acquaintance does not. Id. The Court cited three useful formulations of this core class of `testimonial' statements:  ` ex parte in-court testimony or its functional equivalent  that is, material such as affidavits, custodial examinations, prior testimony that the defendant was unable to cross-examine, or similar pretrial statements that declarants would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially';  `extrajudicial statements . . . contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions';  `statements that were made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial.' Id. at 51-52, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (citations omitted). [12] Subsequently, in Davis, the Supreme Court recognized that statements by witnesses in response to police inquiry are testimonial so long as the primary purpose . . . is to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution. 126 S.Ct. at 2274. Statements that satisfy these tests need not be under oath, Crawford, 541 U.S. at 52, 124 S.Ct. 1354, nor need they be made in response to official interrogation, Davis, 126 S.Ct. at 2274 n. 1, [13] in order to be deemed testimonial. Under every definition of testimony and testimonial in Crawford, as well as the primary purpose test employed in Davis, the DEA chemist's report in this case constituted a core testimonial statement subject to the requirements of the Confrontation Clause. The DEA chemist, a forensic expert employed by a law enforcement agency, was tasked by the government to provide critical expert witness testimony for use against appellant at his criminal trial. As envisioned by D.C.Code § 48-905.06, the chemist's ex parte report was designed to serve as this testimony. In form and content, the report was a formal and solemn attestation  an affidavit, except that it was unsworn  introduced by the prosecution in lieu of the chemist's live testimony to prove an essential element of the charged offense. In this unsworn affidavit, the chemist attested  in conclusory fashion  to the identity and quantity of the controlled substance seized from appellant as revealed by her testing, chain of custody, her qualifications and duties as a DEA chemist, the reliability of her testing methods and procedures, their general acceptance in the forensic science community, and the purity of the chemical reagents and the operability of the analytical instruments that she used in conducting her tests. The use of such ex parte affidavits to secure criminal convictions was the principal evil at which the Confrontation Clause was directed. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 50, 124 S.Ct. 1354. We agree with amicus that it is difficult to imagine a statement more clearly testimonial. Brief of Amicus Curiae at 5. The government argues that the DEA chemist's report is not testimonial because, per our 1984 decision in Howard, it fits within this jurisdiction's hearsay exception for business records, and therefore represents a type of statement Crawford expressly recognizes is not testimonial. Supplemental Brief of Appellee at 14. We are not persuaded by this argument, which we think fundamentally misreads the Supreme Court's opinion. As we explained earlier, in overruling Roberts, Crawford divorced the Confrontation Clause from the rules of hearsay. It is true that the Court observed that [m]ost of the hearsay exceptions [recognized in 1791] covered statements that by their nature were not testimonial  for example, business records. . . . 541 U.S. at 56, 124 S.Ct. 1354. But this observation about the historical business records exception does not mean that everything qualifying as a business record now is automatically non-testimonial for Confrontation Clause purposes. As an historical matter, the exception in 1791 was a very narrow one. See generally 5 John Henry Wigmore, Evidence in Trials at Common Law, §§ 1518-19 (1974 ed.). In Crawford, the Supreme Court found no evidence that the historical business records exception (or any other historical exception apart from that for dying declarations) ever had been invoked to admit testimonial statements against the accused in a criminal case, nor any indication that the Framers thought it could be so used. 541 U.S. at 56, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (emphasis in original). Traditionally, the historical business records exception did not encompass records prepared for use in litigation, let alone records produced ex parte by government agents for later use in criminal prosecutions. See, e.g., United States v. Smith, 172 U.S.App. D.C. 297, 306, 521 F.2d 957, 966 (1975) (discussing the generally accepted litigation records doctrine that would deny the business records exception to any document prepared with an eye toward litigation when offered by the party responsible for making the record.). If, in some jurisdictions, the exception has been enlarged in modern times to include such records, the Supreme Court made it clear enough in Crawford that the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation has not shrunk as a result: Involvement of government officers in the production of testimony with an eye toward trial presents unique potential for prosecutorial abuse  a fact borne out time and again throughout a history with which the Framers were keenly familiar. This consideration does not evaporate when testimony happens to fall within some broad, modern hearsay exception, even if that exception might be justifiable in other circumstances. 541 U.S. at 56 n. 7, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Thus, the Supreme Court has defined testimonial in functional rather than categorical terms. Broadly speaking, the Court has focused in Crawford and Davis on the primary anticipated or intended use of the statement, not on whether the statement qualifies as an exception to the rule against hearsay or falls into some other arbitrary testimonial category. It is true that most documents are not testimonial if they qualify as business records, because most such documents are created for ordinary business purposes unrelated to their potential use by the government in a criminal prosecution. Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, for example, a record cannot qualify as a business record if it was prepared for purposes of litigation. See, e.g., United States v. Feliz, 467 F.3d 227, 234 (2d Cir.2006). [14] But where a document is created primarily for the government to use it as a substitute for live testimony in a criminal prosecution, the fact that the document might happen to fall within the jurisdiction's business records exception to the hearsay rule does not render the document nontestimonial. Accordingly, because DEA chemist's reports are created expressly for use in criminal prosecutions as a substitute for live testimony against the accused, such reports are testimonial, whether or not they happen to meet this jurisdiction's definition of a business record. See State v. Caulfield, 722 N.W.2d 304, 309-10 (Minn.2006) (holding that state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension laboratory report, offered at trial to prove that substance seized from defendant was cocaine, was clearly prepared for litigation and was testimonial). [15] Citing Howard, 473 A.2d at 839, the government also argues that the DEA chemist's report should not be treated as testimonial for Confrontation Clause purposes because it is an objective report of [an] analysis conducted according to standard scientific practices by scientists who  though they are employed by the Department of Justice, i.e., the prosecuting authority  have no motive or opportunity . . . to falsify their results. Supplemental Brief of Appellee at 17-18. None of the historical examples of ex parte testimony discussed in Crawford involved such neutral, scientific evidence, the government asserts. Id. at 18. Such broad statements are open to question; though we do not doubt the overall integrity, competence and disinterestedness of DEA chemists, there have been numerous reports in the years since Howard indicating that government forensic laboratories are not immune from problems of dishonesty, sloppiness, poor training, bias, unsound methodology, and scientific or other error. [16] But the neutrality and trustworthiness of DEA chemists and their reports are beside the point after Crawford. Reliability no longer shields testimony from confrontation. As Crawford makes clear, [d]ispensing with confrontation because testimony is obviously reliable is akin to dispensing with jury trial because a defendant is obviously guilty. This is not what the Sixth Amendment prescribes. 541 U.S. at 62, 124 S.Ct. 1354. The DEA chemist's report was a testimonial statement. Therefore, the Confrontation Clause barred the prosecution from introducing the report at appellant's trial without calling the chemist to testify in person, unless the chemist was unavailable and appellant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the chemist. Neither of the latter two prerequisites was met in this case. As the prosecution advised appellant prior to trial, the DEA chemist was available to testify, and she had not been made available to appellant for cross-examination prior to trial. Nonetheless, the government argues that the Confrontation Clause was satisfied because appellant could have subpoenaed the chemist himself (without cost, per D.C.Code § 48-905.06) and questioned her as upon cross-examination as a hostile witness. The flaw in the logic of this argument is evident: if the chemist was available to the defense, then she also was available to the prosecution, i.e., she was not unavailable to testify in person as Crawford categorically requires. Crawford's unqualified insistence on the declarant's unavailability as a precondition to admitting testimonial hearsay forecloses the argument that there exists an available to the accused exemption from the demands of the Confrontation Clause. [17] To recognize an available to the accused exemption would be contrary not only to Crawford's express command, but to the plain language of the Sixth Amendment. The Confrontation Clause guarantees the accused the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. This language, employing the passive voice, imposes a burden of production on the prosecution, not on the defense. State v. Snowden, 385 Md. 64, 867 A.2d 314, 332 n. 22 (2005) (rejecting the theory that the defendant could call his accusers to the stand because the burden of production . . . is placed on the State [by the Confrontation Clause] to produce affirmatively the witnesses needed for its prima facie showing of the defendant's guilt). In contrast with the accused's right to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, U.S. CONST. amend. VI, which is dependent on the defendant's initiative, the right to be confronted with the prosecution's witnesses and most other rights protected by the Sixth Amendment arise automatically on the initiation of the adversary process and no action by the defendant is necessary to make them active in his or her case. Taylor v. Illinois, 484 U.S. 400, 410, 108 S.Ct. 646, 98 L.Ed.2d 798 (1988) (emphasis added). The Court elaborated on this point by quoting with approval the following commentary: The defendant's rights to be informed of the charges against him, to receive a speedy and public trial, to be tried by a jury, to be assisted by counsel, and to be confronted with adverse witnesses are designed to restrain the prosecution by regulating the procedures by which it presents its case against the accused. They apply in every case, whether or not the defendant seeks to rebut the case against him or to present a case of his own. . . .  Id. at 410 n. 14, 108 S.Ct. 646 (quoting Peter Westen, The Compulsory Process Clause, 73 Mich. L.Rev. 71, 74 (1974)) (emphasis added). The rights of confrontation and compulsory process are not interchangeable. It has been said that [o]nly a lawyer without trial experience would suggest that the limited right to impeach one's own witness is the equivalent of that right to immediate cross-examination which has always been regarded as the greatest safeguard of American trial procedure. New York Life Ins. Co. v. Taylor, 79 U.S.App. D.C. 66, 74, 147 F.2d 297, 305 (1944). More fundamentally, the available to the accused theory of the Confrontation Clause is flawed because it unfairly requires the defendant to choose between his right to cross-examine a complaining [or other prosecution] witness and his right to rely on the State's burden of proof in a criminal case. Snowden, 867 A.2d at 332-33 (quoting Lowery v. Collins, 988 F.2d 1364, 1369-70 (5th Cir.1993)). If the defendant exercises his constitutional right to put the government to its proof and not put on a defense, the prosecution evidence  what amicus aptly calls the misleadingly pristine testimonial hearsay of absent witnesses [18]  may appear deceptively probative in the absence of cross-examination. In effect, the lack of confrontation would ease the government's burden of proof. Alternatively, any defense presentation may be hamstrung and disrupted if the defendant  unlike the prosecutor  must call not only the witnesses in his favor, but also the witnesses against him. Ultimately the effect could be to blur the presumption of innocence and the principle that the burden of proof on the prosecution never shifts throughout the trial. [19] To be sure, the government does not invite us to adopt an available to the accused exemption from confrontation on a wholesale basis. Rather, the government argues that the right to confront and to cross-examine is not absolute and may, in appropriate cases, bow to accommodate other legitimate interests in the criminal trial process. Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 295, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973). An accommodating bow is appropriate for DEA chemists' reports, the government urges, because such putatively objective, scientific evidence is seldom in dispute, and requiring the expert to appear in every drug prosecution therefore would be a waste of time and public resources. [20] This plea of administrative convenience, which echoes the reliability rationale of Howard, does not persuade us. Crawford explicitly held that reliability cannot justify abrogating a defendant's right of confrontation. Nothing in Crawford suggests that its per se rule may be annulled based on Roberts -era notions of balancing the confrontation right against the other legitimate interests identified by the government.  Crawford removed the flexibility courts had to balance the state's interests, however legitimate, against the need for prior cross-examination and unavailability of the witness before testimonial evidence can be admitted. Caulfield, 722 N.W.2d at 312. Even prior to Crawford, moreover, the Supreme Court held that curtailment of the right of confrontation is permissible only if it shown to be  necessary to further an important public policy. Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836, 850, 110 S.Ct. 3157, 111 L.Ed.2d 666 (1990) (upholding state procedure allowing testimony of alleged victim of child sex abuse to be received by one-way closed circuit television, where necessary to protect child from serious trauma caused by testifying in defendant's presence) (emphasis added). There has been no showing of necessity in the present case. [21] In fact, as we discuss momentarily, the government's goals can be achieved without eroding the Confrontation Clause. Our discussion thus far compels us to conclude that the Confrontation Clause admits no exception for DEA chemists' reports. That brings us to the question whether D.C.Code § 48-905.06 is constitutional. In apparent contravention of Crawford's understanding of the Confrontation Clause, the statute directs that a chemist's report is admissible in evidence in the chemist's absence (even if the chemist is available, and even if the defendant had no prior opportunity to cross-examine the chemist), unless the defendant subpoenas the chemist to appear. In that event, the last sentence of the statute states, the examination shall be as on cross-examination. Id. The government argues that we can and should construe the statute to avoid the apparent constitutional difficulty by interpret[ing] the last sentence of section 48-905.06 to provide that if the defendant wishes to examine the chemist at trial, he or she should notify the government, which then must present the chemist as a witness in its own case. Supplemental Brief of Appellee at 36. Such a construction, the government explains, would allow confrontation and cross-examination during the government's case without requiring the chemist to testify in the majority of cases where the chemical analysis is not in dispute. Id. at 37. [22] The implication of the government's suggestion is that if the defendant fails to notify the government that he wishes to be confronted with the chemist at trial, the government will not need to call the chemist in order to introduce the chemist's report. In other words, under the government's proposal, a failure to demand confrontation would automatically constitute a waiver of the right. We agree that D.C.Code § 48-905.06 should be construed so as to preserve its constitutionality if it is possible to do so. See, e.g., Keels v. United States, 785 A.2d 672, 684-85 (D.C.2001). [23] We conclude that a saving construction is fairly possible along the lines of the government's proposal. In order for the prosecution to introduce the chemist's report in evidence without calling the chemist to testify, the record must show a constitutionally valid waiver by the defendant of his confrontation right. By leaving assertion of that right to the defendant, D.C.Code § 48-905.06 evinces a clear legislative preference to have this question of waiver resolved in advance of trial, in the interests of efficiency and so as to avoid unnecessary disruption of the operations of the DEA laboratory. We see no objection in principle to resolving the question of waiver prior to trial; it is not burdensome for a defendant represented by counsel to have to state, when asked, whether he waives his rights or not. [24] For the waiver to be valid, however, it must be an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege. Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461 (1938); see, e.g., Barber v. Page, 390 U.S. 719, 725, 88 S.Ct. 1318, 20 L.Ed.2d 255 (1968) (waiver of Sixth Amendment right to confrontation). Because a valid waiver cannot be presumed from a silent record, demand-waiver rules, under which defendants presumptively waive constitutional rights if they do not affirmatively demand them, are disfavored. See Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 525, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972) (rejecting demand-waiver rule for Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial; [s]uch an approach, by presuming waiver of a fundamental right from inaction, is inconsistent with [the Supreme] Court's pronouncements on waiver of constitutional rights.) (footnote omitted). Given the rule that a valid waiver may not be presumed from a silent record, and the Supreme Court's disinclination to accept demand-waiver rules for Sixth Amendment rights, the best course for the government obviously will be to obtain an express waiver by the defendant, on the record in advance of trial, when the defendant has not responded to the government's statutory notification by requesting the chemist's presence at trial. Such an express waiver typically may, but need not, take the form of a stipulation by the defendant as to the contents of the chemist's report. The trial court may assist the process by addressing at a pretrial hearing whether the defendant elects to waive his right to be confronted with the chemist. (Of course, if the defendant expressly declines to stipulate or otherwise excuse the presence of the chemist, that is equivalent to a refusal to waive the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation, and the government then must call the chemist in its case in order to introduce the chemist's report.) Trial courts therefore seldom if ever should be faced with the question whether to infer a valid waiver of the right of confrontation, in the absence of an express waiver, simply from a defendant's pretrial failure to notify the government to produce the chemist. However, if a defendant represented by counsel is provided with the chemist's report and is advised that a failure to request the chemist's presence for purposes of confrontation will be understood as a waiver of the right and as a stipulation to the admissibility of the chemist's report, we think that a trial court would be justified in inferring a valid waiver from an unexplained or unexcused failure by the defendant to respond. Cf. Barker, 407 U.S. at 528-29, 92 S.Ct. 2182. Thus, we construe D.C.Code § 48-905.06 to preserve its constitutionality. Where a defendant expressly asserts his Sixth Amendment right by subpoenaing the chemist or otherwise informing the government that he wishes to cross-examine the chemist at trial, we have no difficulty accepting the government's suggestion to construe the provision that the examination shall be as on cross-examination to mean that the prosecution must call the chemist in its case. Conversely, so long as the record shows a constitutionally valid waiver by the defendant of his confrontation right, D.C.Code § 48-905.06 authorizes the government to introduce the chemist's report in evidence without calling the chemist to testify. The record does not show a valid waiver in this case. [25] We therefore conclude that it was constitutional error to admit the DEA chemist's report at appellant's trial in the government's case-in-chief in the chemist's absence. The first prong of the plain error test is satisfied.