Opinion ID: 2405195
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of DNA Testing Results through Dr. Cotton's Testimony and of Serology Testing through Dr. Zervos's Testimony was Constitutional Error[5]

Text: At trial, Dr. Cotton testified regarding the results of DNA testing of the blood smear on appellant's jacket, a swab from appellant's face, and a swab from the murder weapon. Dr. Cotton did not perform the DNA testing herself and she did not supervise the analyst who performed the testing. In fact, Dr. Cotton worked in a lab in Maryland, but the tests were conducted in Texas. Dr. Cotton's only involvement in this case was the technical review of the case file and lab report after it was mailed to her. Dr. Zervos, who did not conduct or supervise testing, testified about the results of serology testing of the blood smear from appellant's jacket. Like Dr. Cotton, she was the technical reviewer of the results and final report. While on the stand, both Dr. Cotton and Dr. Zervos read directly from the reports of the analysts who conducted the tests. Dr. Cotton also displayed and referred to enlarged copies of the lab report, which had been admitted into evidence, to help her explain the testing process and the results. Despite conceding that the trial court erred in admitting into evidence the DNA test report and certain portions of the expert testimony, the government contends that the majority of the experts' testimony was proper and admissible because their independent analyses were the key constituents of their opinions. In putting forth this argument, the government heavily relies upon In re Melton, a psychiatric civil commitment case, for the proposition that hearsay evidence is routinely relied upon by experts in forming their opinions, and that it is acceptable for experts to rely upon information that is inadmissible as substantive evidence. 597 A.2d 892 (D.C.1991) (adopting Federal Rule of Evidence 703). [6] However, as appellant points out, the Melton opinion made clear that the underlying hearsay is only admissible for the limited non-hearsay purpose of evaluating the reasonableness and correctness of [the expert's] conclusions, and not to establish the truth of the matters asserted. . . . Id. at 901 (quoting United States v. Williams, 447 F.2d 1285, 1290 (5th Cir.1971) ( en banc ), cert. denied, 405 U.S. 954, 92 S.Ct. 1168, 31 L.Ed.2d 231 (1972)). The Melton court stressed that this balance could only be achieved through the provision of a jury instruction limiting the use of the statement to its non-hearsay purpose. [7] Significantly, no limiting instruction was provided to the jury in this case. [8] Moreover, appellant challenges whether such a Melton limiting instruction, even if one were given, would have insulated the expert testimony in this case from a Confrontation Clause violation. Melton, supra, 597 A.2d at 901; Crawford, supra, 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354. Melton addressed the reliability concern inherent in hearsay, holding that a properly qualified expert is assumed to have the necessary skill to evaluate any second-hand information and give it only such probative force as the circumstances warrant, and instructing that objections to the reliability of out-of-court material relied upon by [the expert] will be treated as affecting only the weight, and not the admissibility, of the evidence. Melton, 597 A.2d at 903-04. Crawford , however, made clear that the reliability of an out-of-court statement does not override a Confrontation Clause problem: Dispensing with confrontation because testimony is obviously reliable is akin to dispensing with [a] jury trial because a defendant is obviously guilty. This is not what the Sixth Amendment prescribes. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 62, 124 S.Ct. 1354. See also Thomas, supra note 4, 914 A.2d at 14-15 (Reliability no longer shields testimony from confrontation.). Thus, while the Melton rule may remain good law in terms of its applicability to hearsay concerns, Crawford may very well have narrowed the significance of Melton. We previously declined to resolve the question of Melton's relevance after Crawford in two similar cases, Roberts v. United States [9] and Veney v. United States , [10] and we decline to do so here as well. We need not determine whether the Confrontation Clause precludes the introduction of testimonial hearsay for the limited purpose of evaluating the soundness of an expert opinion because here the testimonial hearsay was admitted as substantive evidence, that is for the truth of the matter asserted, and no limiting instruction was provided to mitigate the problem. [11] This case is analogous to Veney, supra , where an FBI DNA expert and supervisory analyst testified to the procedure and the results of the testing even though he had not himself conducted the DNA testing. In that case, this court found determinative the fact that [the expert] made references to the serology tests and the data produced by the DNA-typing instrument and that [t]hese test results, therefore, were offered as substantive evidence. 929 A.2d at 469. Similarly, in Roberts, supra , a supervisory DNA analyst, who did not actually conduct the testing, testified that the opinions he was testifying to were his own . . . [because] he went `through [the report] as if it's my case . . . and [came] to [his own] conclusions and . . . interpretation.' 916 A.2d at 937-38. In that case, in the absence of a limiting instruction to the jury, this court held insufficient the expert's assertion that the conclusions were his own: Our review of the record confirms that, at least in part, [the expert's] opinion that appellant could not be excluded as a contributor to the DNA evidence rested on the conclusions reached by the team that did the actual laboratory analysis and set forth those conclusions in the report he reviewed. Id. at 938 (emphasis added). In light of the fact that the conclusions of FBI laboratory scientists have been indisputably held to be testimonial, the Roberts court concluded that the appellant's Sixth Amendment Confrontation rights could have been satisfied only by cross-examination of those scientists who actually conducted the testing. Id. This case is controlled by Veney and Roberts because, like the experts in those cases, both experts quoted and directly referred to the conclusions of the lab analysts. [12] The Fourth Circuit has observed that: Allowing a witness simply to parrot out-of-court testimonial statements of cooperating witnesses and confidential informants directly to the jury in the guise of expert opinion would provide an end run around Crawford . For this reason, an expert's use of testimonial hearsay is a matter of degree. . . . The question is whether the expert is, in essence, giving an independent judgment or merely acting as a transmitter for testimonial hearsay. United States v. Johnson, 587 F.3d 625, 635 (4th Cir.2009) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted) (emphasis added). [13] The government suggests that the majority of the expert testimony in this case was independent judgment. Id. Accordingly, they urge us to answer the question that we declined to answer in our earlier cases and hold that the Melton rule survived Crawford and insulates the independent assessments of the experts from the Sixth Amendment. [14] In order to do this, the government suggests we break down the expert testimony, ignoring direct references to the inadmissible hearsay conclusions of the analysts who conducted the testing, and solely consider the independent opinions of the experts. This would require an impossible feat of mental gymnastics. Dr. Cotton's and Dr. Zervos's explicit reliance on and references to the reports prepared by third parties make it impossible to disaggregate their opinion testimony from evidence admitted in violation of the Confrontation Clause. Moreover, in the absence of a limiting jury instruction, such an analysis would be irrelevant because the jury clearly did not ignore the improper expert testimony.