Opinion ID: 3173260
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admission of Lynch's Expert Opinion Testimony

Text: We consider first Barbosa's argument that allowing Lynch to offer her own opinion based on the results of Delatore's testimony violated clearly established Sixth Amendment law. To build this argument, Barbosa points to Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. 305 (2009), as the Supreme Court decision that he says clearly established by 2010 that Lynch should not have been allowed to offer an opinion that relied on the work of another person who did not testify. Melendez-Diaz did not involve a challenge to a witness's testimony. Rather, the challenged evidence submitted by the prosecution in that case consisted solely of three certificates of analysis showing the results of a forensic analysis performed on seized substances in a drug trafficking case. Id. at 308. The analysts who performed the tests did not testify, and the court admitted the certificates into evidence over the defendant's objection, taking them as prima facie evidence of the composition, quality, and the net weight of the narcotic . . . analyzed. Id. at 309 (alteration in original) (quoting Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 111, § 13 (2008) (repealed 2012)). - 10 - Barbosa nevertheless argues that he need not show that the facts of Melendez-Diaz are on all fours with the facts here. He need only show that Melendez-Diaz clearly established law that, without extension, applied here beyond doubt. Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 666 (2004). The problem for Barbosa, though, is that it was hardly beyond doubt that Melendez-Diaz's ruling concerning testimonial pieces of paper applied without extension to live testimony by an expert witness who has some connection to the scientific report prepared by another whom she supervised, or who is asked to offer her own opinion about reports that themselves cannot be put into evidence. To the contrary, four U.S. Supreme Court Justices later read Melendez-Diaz as not establishing at all, much less beyond doubt, the proposition that admitting an opinion such as that offered by Lynch violates the right to confrontation. See Williams v. Illinois, 132 S. Ct. 2221, 2228 (2012) (plurality opinion). Indeed, by blessing the admission of almost identical testimony by a DNA expert, the Court's actual holding in Williams might well be read as telling us that Barbosa is not, with respect to this issue, being held in custody in violation of the Constitution, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a), much less that the fact of a violation was clearly established in 2010. In light of the foregoing, we conclude that the admission of Lynch's own expert opinion does not provide a basis for habeas corpus relief. - 11 - 2. Admission of Delatore's Results Table and Lynch's Recitation of Delatore's Findings We turn, last, to Barbosa's challenge to the admission of Delatore's results table and Lynch's recitation of Delatore's findings. Because Barbosa did not object in the trial court to the admission of this testimony or otherwise preserve his claim of error, the SJC reviewed the claimed error under Massachusetts' miscarriage of justice standard. Barbosa, 933 N.E.2d at 111. Usually, such a finding of procedural default would constitute an independent and adequate state law ground for a state court's decision, thereby foreclosing habeas relief unless the petitioner can demonstrate cause for the default and prejudice stemming therefrom, or, alternatively, unless the petitioner can show that a refusal to consider the merits of the constitutional claim will work a miscarriage of justice. Burks v. Dubois, 55 F.3d 712, 716 (1st Cir. 1995) (citing Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750 (1991)). The State, though, advances no argument that Barbosa's failure to make a contemporaneous objection to the admission of the results table constituted an independent state law ground for the SJC's refusal to grant relief. Tart v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 949 F.2d 490, 496 (1st Cir. 1991). Rather, the State actually suggests that the SJC ruled on the merits of Barbosa's claim. We will therefore accept the State's invitation - 12 - to ignore Barbosa's own default, and consider the merits of his belated challenge to the admission of Delatore's results table and Lynch's recitation of Delatore's findings.1 On the merits, the State also does not dispute that admitting Delatore's results table and allowing Lynch to recite for the truth of the matter information from the table violated clearly established law under the Confrontation Clause. The State argues, instead, that the admission of the results table and of Lynch's recitation of information from the table for its truth was harmless because the evidence was cumulative and because the properly admitted evidence against [Barbosa] was overwhelming. When there is a preserved constitutional error in a conviction challenged on habeas review, we are required to apply the harmless error test adopted in Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619 (1993). Brecht held that a petitioner is entitled to habeas relief if the constitutional error had a substantial and injurious 1 The Supreme Court has held that a court of appeals, when reviewing a district court's habeas decision, is not required to raise, sua sponte, the issue of a petitioner's procedural default when [t]he parties themselves ha[ve] neither raised nor argued the matter. Trest v. Cain, 522 U.S. 87, 89 (1997). This court has specifically held that even when the government has not argued procedural default, we have authority, but not the obligation, to raise the issue sua sponte. Ortiz v. Dubois, 19 F.3d 708, 714–15 (1st Cir. 1994); see also Trest, 522 U.S. at 90 (declining to decide whether, or just when, a habeas court may consider a procedural default that the State at some point has waived, or failed to raise). We decline to exercise this authority in this case. - 13 - effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict. Id. at 637 (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 776 (1946)); see also Wright v. Marshall, 656 F.3d 102, 108 (1st Cir. 2011). We find no such effect or influence on the verdict in this case. The results table and the testimony about Delatore's conclusions indicated on that table were probative, and thus potentially harmful, because they pointed to the victim rather than Barbosa as the source of the blood on Barbosa's pant leg and boot. That same incriminating linkage, though, was provided directly by Lynch's own opinion in relying on Delatore's work, and we have now found the admission of that opinion not to have been contrary to clearly established federal law. See supra Part II.B.1. The evidence before the jury also included an abundance of other evidence indicating Barbosa's guilt, including Carbuccia's identification of Barbosa as the shooter; Sanches's testimony corroborating Carbuccia's identification; Carbuccia's testimony that he and Serret had witnessed Barbosa murder another man approximately two weeks before the shooting; and police testimony regarding Barbosa's behavior when encountered shortly after the shooting, including his flight from the police and-- likely most damning--the fact that he dropped an object in the catch basin from which the gun used in the shooting was later retrieved. Barbosa, 933 N.E.2d at 99–103. Given the force of - 14 - this evidence as a whole, we cannot conclude that the largely cumulative evidence pertaining to the results table had a substantial and injurious effect on the verdict. See Brecht, 507 U.S. at 639.