Opinion ID: 2124919
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Reliability of the Evidence

Text: Defendant's first argument, that the statute violates the confrontation clause, consists of three prongs: (1) the statute does not require the State to establish the unavailability of the crime lab employee before introducing the lab report; (2) the statute neither falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception nor requires particularized guarantees of trustworthiness; and (3) the statute is not necessary to further an important public policy. We agree with defendant's second point and thus see no need to address the other two arguments. Defendant's argument is based primarily on Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), in which the Supreme Court held that hearsay evidence must possess certain indicia of reliability. Roberts, 448 U.S. at 65-66, 100 S.Ct. at 2538-39, 65 L.Ed.2d at 607-08. [3] For the third prong of his argument, defendant relies on Craig, 497 U.S. at 850, 110 S.Ct. at 3166, 111 L.Ed.2d at 682, in which the Supreme Court held that a defendant's right to confront the witnesses against him may be denied only where that denial is necessary to further an important public policy. The State does not address these arguments on their merits, instead choosing to argue that section 115-15 does not create a confrontation clause problem because subsection (c) of the statute allows defendants to preserve their confrontation rights. We agree with defendant. First, the evidence admissible pursuant to section 115-15 does not fall within a firmly rooted hearsay exception. In the trial court, the State argued that section 115-15 lab reports fall within the business records exception to the hearsay rule. This is unquestionably false. An exception to the business records hearsay exception are those writings or records that have been made by anyone during an investigation of an alleged offense or during any investigation relating to pending or anticipated litigation of any kind. 725 ILCS 5/115-5(c)(2) (West 1998); People v. Smith, 141 Ill.2d 40, 72, 152 Ill.Dec. 218, 565 N.E.2d 900 (1990). The lab reports covered by section 115-15 are prepared during the course of criminal investigations and are requested by the State in anticipation of prosecutions. Second, section 115-15 does not contain particularized guarantees of trust-worthiness. Essentially, the preparer of the report merely has to attest that he or she is qualified to conduct the test and that he or she used due caution and acted within established procedures. Indeed, in this case, the only information as to Sandra Brown's qualifications is her own statement in the affidavit that her education, training and experience qualify [her] to perform the analyses conducted in this manner. The statute does not require the State to provide any information as to how the tests are conducted, what the accepted scientific procedures are, and what qualifications and training the crime lab employees must have. In other words, after the defendant has been arrested, the entity that seeks to prosecute him sends the evidence to its own lab for testing. The evidence is then admissible on nothing more than the vague assurances of the prosecuting authority's own employee that proper testing was done and that the employee is qualified to do the testing. The State does not argue, nor do we discern, that the statute contains particularized guarantees of trustworthiness. In sum, we agree with defendant that the lab reports admissible pursuant to section 115-15 neither contain particularized guarantees of trustworthiness nor fall within a firmly established hearsay exception. We turn next to the question of whether any confrontation clause problems are avoided by subsection 115-15(c), which allows defendants to demand the testimony of the report's preparer within seven days of a defendant's receipt of the report.