Opinion ID: 2570814
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Testimonial

Text: The starting point for Appleby's Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause objection is the United States Supreme Court's holding in Crawford that the testimonial statements of witnesses absent from trial are admissible over a Confrontation Clause objection only when the declarant is unavailable and the defendant has had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the declarant. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354. This analysis altered the prior rule of Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), abrogated in Crawford, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177, under which a hearsay statement made by an unavailable witness could be admitted without violating the Confrontation Clause if the statement contained adequate guarantees of trustworthiness or indicia of reliability. Roberts, 448 U.S. at 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531. Post- Crawford, the threshold question in any Confrontation Clause analysis is whether the hearsay statement at issue is testimonial in nature. State v. Brown, 285 Kan. 261, 285, 173 P.3d 612 (2007). The Supreme Court did not explicitly define the term testimonial in Crawford. The Court did state, however, that [w]hatever else the term covers, it applies at a minimum to prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, before a grand jury, or at a former trial; and to police interrogations. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 68, 124 S.Ct. 1354; see also Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813, 822, 126 S.Ct. 2266, 165 L.Ed.2d 224 (2006) (in context of police interrogations, statements are nontestimonial when made under circumstances objectively indicating that the primary purpose of the interrogation is to enable police assistance to meet an ongoing emergency). Recently, in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 2527, 174 L.Ed.2d 314, 321-22, 332-33 (2009), the second of the cases that led us to stay this opinion pending a United States Supreme Court decision, the Supreme Court held that forensic laboratory certificates of analysis were testimonial and the admission of the certificates without the testimony of the analysts violated a criminal defendant's rights under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. In reaching the conclusion that the certificates were testimonial, the Supreme Court focused on two factors, stating: (1) The `certificates' are functionally identical to live, in-court testimony, doing `precisely what a witness does on direct examination.' [Citation omitted]; and (2) the affidavits [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.' [Citation omitted.] Melendez-Diaz, ___ U.S. at ___, 129 S.Ct. at 2531, 174 L.Ed.2d at 321; cf. Brown, 285 Kan. at 291, 173 P.3d 612 (listing these and other factors to consider in determining if an eyewitness' statement is testimonial). After finding the laboratory analysts' certificates met these tests to define testimonial hearsay, the Melendez-Diaz Court rejected the argument that a different result was justified by the objectivity of the scientific testing and reliability of the test results. The Melendez-Diaz majority, discussing this topic in the context of responding to points made by the four dissenting justices, observed: This argument is little more than an invitation to return to our overruled decision in Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597, which held that evidence with `particularized guarantees of trustworthiness' was admissible notwithstanding the Confrontation Clause. [ Roberts, 448 U.S.] at 66[, 100 S.Ct. 2531][]. What we said in Crawford in response to that argument remains true: `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.' [ Crawford, ] 541 U.S. at 61-62[, 124 S.Ct. 1354][]. Melendez-Diaz, [___ U.S. at ___, 129 S.Ct. at 2535-37,] 174 L.Ed.2d at 325-26. This discussion is particularly relevant in this case because the State argues the scientific, objective nature of the DNA testing and the statistical probability program means the evidence at issue in this case is nontestimonial. The trial court accepted this argument and partially based its decision on such a rationale, as evidenced by the trial court's reliance on and citation to Lackey, 280 Kan. 190, Syl. ¶ 5, 120 P.3d 332, which in turn was partially based on the rationale that an autopsy report recorded objective, scientific evidence. Melendez-Diaz undercuts this rationale. Nevertheless, Melendez-Diaz does not answer the question of whether there was a Confrontation Clause violation in this case. Here, unlike in Melendez-Diaz, the laboratory analysts who performed the DNA testing were in court and subject to cross-examination. The hearsay at issue is the data that was relied on by laboratory analyst Soderholm in reaching her opinion regarding population frequency of specific DNA profiles. The closest the Melendez-Diaz Court came to answering this question was to rebut the dissenting justices' argument that the holding would require several individuals from a laboratory to testify. The Court stated: [W]e do not hold, and it is not the case, that anyone whose testimony may be relevant in establishing the chain of custody, authenticity of the sample, or accuracy of the testing device, must appear in person as part of the prosecution's case.... [D]ocuments prepared in the regular course of equipment maintenance may well qualify as nontestimonial records. Melendez-Diaz, ___ U.S. at ___, 129 S.Ct. at 2532 n. 1, 174 L.Ed.2d at 322 n. 1. While this statement suggests that not all aspects of the testing process are testimonial and therefore subject to a defendant's rights under the Confrontation Clause, the examples differ from the question of whether the data that underlies an expert's opinion is testimonial. Therefore, the decision does not directly answer our question. Nevertheless, applying the tests utilized in Melendez-Diaz, we conclude the population frequency data and the statistical programs used to make that data meaningful are nontestimonial. We first note that DNA itself is physical evidence and is nontestimonial. Wilson v. Collins, 517 F.3d 421, 431 (6th Cir.2008); United States v. Zimmerman, 514 F.3d 851, 855 (9th Cir.2007); see also Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 765, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966) (holding that blood test evidence, although an incriminating product of compulsion, [is] neither... testimony nor evidence relating to some communicative act or writing and is therefore not protected by the Fifth Amendment). Placing this physical evidence in a database with other physical evidence  i.e., other DNA profiles  does not convert the nature of the evidence, even if the purpose of pooling the profiles is to allow comparisons that identify criminals. See 42 U.S.C. §§ 14132(b)(3), 14135e (2006) (stating purposes of CODIS and clearly recognizing use during trial when rules of evidence allow). The database is comprised of physical, nontestimonial evidence. Further, the acts of writing computer programs that allow a comparison of samples of physical evidence or that calculate probabilities of a particular sample occurring in a defined population are nontestimonial actions. In other words, neither the database nor the statistical program are functionally identical to live, in-court testimony, doing what a witness does on direct examination. Rather, it is the expert's opinion, which is subjected to cross-examination, that is testimonial. At least one other court has reached the same conclusion that the statistical data obtained from CODIS is nontestimonial. See State v. Bruce, 2008 WL 4801648 (Ohio App. 2008) (unpublished opinion). More generally, several courts have reasoned that the Confrontation Clause is not violated if materials that form the basis of an expert's opinion are not submitted for the truth of their contents but are examined to assess the weight of the expert's opinion. E.g., United States v. Lombardozzi, 491 F.3d 61, 73 (2d Cir.2007); United States v. Henry, 472 F.3d 910, 914 (D.C.Cir.2007); United States v. Adams, 189 Fed.Appx. 120, 124, 2006 WL 1888737 (3d Cir.2006) (unpublished opinion); United States v. Stone, 222 F.R.D. 334, 339 (E.D.Tenn.2004); People v. Sisneros, 174 Cal.App.4th 142, 153-54, 94 Cal.Rptr.3d 98 (2009); State v. Lewis, 235 S.W.3d 136, 151 (Tenn.2007); see Note, Testimonial Hearsay as the Basis for Expert Opinion: The Intersection of the Confrontation Clause and Federal Rule of Evidence 703 after Crawford v. Washington, 55 Hastings L.J. 1539, 1540 (2004). Here, as explained in the testimony in this case, the database and the statistical program are accepted sources of information generally relied on by DNA experts. Based on this scientific data  which by itself is nontestimonial  the experts in this case developed their personal opinions. See State v. Dykes, 252 Kan. 556, 562, 847 P.2d 1214 (1993). These experts were available for cross-examination and their opinions could be tested by inquiry into their knowledge or lack of knowledge regarding the data that formed the basis for their opinion. Consequently, the right to confront the witnesses was made available to Appleby. The trial court did not err in admitting the opinions of the DNA experts.