Opinion ID: 795462
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Business Records of the Underlying Medical Tests

Text: 19 Faced with the obvious obstacle of the Court's designation of business records as nontestimonial, Ellis attacks the underlying medical records by arguing that they were created not because of routine medical procedures, but because of a government investigation. What we gather from this argument is that most business records would by their very nature have been created prior to any investigation of criminal activity, and that these are the type of business records the Court had in mind. The records used against Ellis, however, might be considered testimonial because they were created under police supervision and during an investigation for the purpose of determining whether a crime had been committed. 20 Whether a statement was made with an eye toward prosecution, that is, with the knowledge or for the purpose that it would be used later for prosecution, is an important aspect of delineating between testimonial and nontestimonial evidence. Two of the possible definitions of testimonial provided by the Court in Crawford focus on this circumstance. See Crawford, 541 U.S. at 51-52, 124 S.Ct. 1354 ( ex parte in-court testimony or its functional equivalent . . . that declarants would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially and 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) (citations omitted). And the courts of appeals have taken to defining testimonial in terms of whether the declarant reasonably expected the statement to be used prosecutorially. E.g., United States v. Maher, 454 F.3d 13, 21 (1st Cir. 2006) (holding a statement to be testimonial because it [was] clear that an objectively reasonable person in [the declarant's] shoes would understand that the statement would be used in prosecuting [the defendant] at trial); United States v. Hinton, 423 F.3d 355, 359 (3d Cir.2005) (explaining that statements are testimonial when made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial) (citations and quotations omitted); United States v. Cromer, 389 F.3d 662, 673-74 (6th Cir. 2004) (explaining that a statement is testimonial when a reasonable person in the declarant's position would anticipate his statement being used against the accused in investigating and prosecuting the crime); United States v. Saget, 377 F.3d 223, 228-29 (2d Cir.2004) ( Crawford at least suggests that the determinative factor in determining whether a declarant bears testimony is the declarant's awareness or expectation that his or her statements may later be used at a trial.); see also Richard D. Friedman, Confrontation: The Search for Basic Principles, 86 Geo. L.J. 1011, 1042-43 (1998) (defining a testimonial statement as one made when the declarant anticipates that the statement will be used in the prosecution or investigation of a crime). 21 We, in fact, have previously rejected a Crawford argument on the basis that the challenged statements (certified certificates of vehicle titles, including odometer statements used to prove fraud) were not testimonial because they were not made with the respective declarants having an eye towards criminal prosecution. United States v. Gilbertson, 435 F.3d 790, 795-96 (7th Cir.2006) (citing Crawford, 541 U.S. at 56 n. 7, 124 S.Ct. 1354). 22 Given the focus of the courts of appeals and our own precedent on the declarant's reasonable expectations of whether a statement would be used prosecutorially, Ellis may appear to be on strong ground in arguing that the results of his medical tests were testimonial. It must have been obvious to Kristy (the laboratory technician at the local hospital) that her test results might end up as evidence against Ellis in some kind of trial. After all, she indicated on the form that the reason for the tests was Reasonable Suspicion/Cause. Moreover, the police officer's participation in initiating these tests—the officer accompanied Ellis to the hospital and even watched him urinate in a cup— would also have led Kristy to believe that her test results would be used for criminal prosecution. The same might go for the professionals performing the tests out of state. The forms which we assume accompanied the samples bore the ominous Reasonable Suspicion/Cause indication checked by Kristy, and the blood sample form also had the notation that it was Requested by Officer. 23 Nevertheless, we do not think these circumstances transform what is otherwise a nontestimonial business record into a testimonial statement implicating the Confrontation Clause. There is no indication that the observations embodied in Ellis's medical records were made in anything but the ordinary course of business. Such observations, the Court in Crawford made clear, are nontestimonial. 541 U.S. at 56, 124 S.Ct. 1354. And we do not think it matters that these observations were made with the knowledge that they might be used for criminal prosecution. Prior to the Court's decision in Davis, two other courts of appeals decided that certificates of non-existence of record (CNR), admitted under Rule 803(10) and used to prove an alien did not receive permission from the Attorney General to reenter the country, were nontestimonial despite the fact they were prepared by the government in anticipation of a criminal prosecution. See, e.g., United States v. Cervantes-Flores, 421 F.3d 825, 833 (9th Cir.2005); United States v. Rueda-Rivera, 396 F.3d 678, 680 (5th Cir.2005). The focus of these decisions was that the preparation of these CNRs was routine, and the statements in them were simply too far removed from the examples of testimonial evidence provided by Crawford. Cervantes-Flores, 421 F.3d at 833-34; Rueda-Rivera, 396 F.3d at 680. 24 We agree with these courts that the mere fact a person creating a business record (or other similar record) knows the record might be used for criminal prosecution does not by itself make that record testimonial. The Court's recent decision in Davis (though we recognize the Court made no such pronouncement) supports this conclusion because we think it necessarily rejects a strict adherence to denominating as testimonial all statements made under circumstances where a reasonable person would know the statements might be used as evidence of a crime. 25 In Davis, the Court addressed a statement made by a woman to a 911 operator reporting she had been assaulted. 126 S.Ct. at 2270-71. That recorded statement was later used at trial to prosecute Davis (the woman's former boyfriend) for a felony violation of a domestic no-contact order. Id. at 2271. The Court considered the 911 operator's questioning of the woman to be an interrogation, id. at 2274 n. 1, and the operators themselves to be at least agents of law enforcement, id. at 2274 n. 2. In the face of Davis's objection that introduction of the statement violated the Sixth Amendment, the Court held that when the objective circumstances indicate the primary purpose of police interrogation is to meet an ongoing emergency, the statements elicited in response are nontestimonial. Id. at 2273-74. We believe this holding necessarily implies that consciousness on the part of the person reporting an emergency (or the police officer eliciting information about the emergency) that his or her statements might be used as evidence in a crime does not lead to the conclusion ipso facto that the statement is testimonial. A reasonable person reporting a domestic disturbance, which is what the declarant in Davis was doing, will be aware that the result is the arrest and possible prosecution of the perpetrator. See, e.g., Richard D. Friedman & Bridget McCormack, Dial-In-Testimony, 150 U. Pa. L.Rev. 1171, 1199 (concluding that most 911 callers know that by reporting domestic violence they are practically ensuring that the other person will be arrested, and that a criminal prosecution will probably follow). So it cannot be that a statement is testimonial in every case where a declarant reasonably expects that it might be used prosecutorially. 3 26 While the medical professionals in this case might have thought their observations would end up as evidence in a criminal prosecution, the objective circumstances of this case indicate that their observations and statements introduced at trial were made in nothing else but the ordinary course of business. Therefore, when these professionals made those observations, they—like the declarant reporting an emergency in Davis —were not acting as . . . witness[es];  and were not testifying.  See Davis, 126 S.Ct. at 2277 (emphasis in original). They were employees simply recording observations which, because they were made in the ordinary course of business, are statements that by their nature were not testimonial. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 56, 124 S.Ct. 1354.