Court Opinion

ID: 9523572
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:44:17.210593+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:06:31.094034
License: Public Domain

Read, J. (concurring).
I would hold that the forensic reports at issue in these appeals are not testimonial statements within the meaning of Crawford v Washington (541 US 36 [2004]). In Rawlins, the putative declarant matched up a faceless sample of physical evidence from the crime scene—a latent print—with defendant’s fingerprint card; in Meekins, the putative declarants analyzed samples taken from the complainant’s rape kit to *161create a DNA profile. Neither report resembles the evils the Confrontation Clause addresses: they are not former testimony or the product of police interrogation; they do not fall within the civil-law mode of ex parte examination. Both “involve[ ], in principal part, a careful and contemporaneous reporting of a series of steps taken and facts found,” which are “in the nature of a business record” (United States v De La Cruz, 514 F3d 121, 133 [1st Cir 2008] [“(B)usiness records are expressly excluded from the reach of Crawford”]; see also United States v Feliz, 467 F3d 227, 233-234 [2d Cir 2006] [statements properly admitted under the Federal Rules of Evidence as business records “cannot be testimonial because a business record is fundamentally inconsistent with what the Supreme Court has suggested comprise the defining characteristics of testimonial evidence”]; People v Pacer, 6 NY3d 504, 510 [2006] [remarking that “(t)he Crawford court concluded that business records would not have been considered testimonial at the time the Confrontation Clause was adopted,” but rejecting prosecution’s argument that the particular affidavit at issue was akin to a business or public record]).
Further, the distinctions advanced by the majority do not explain why the fingerprint comparison in Rawlins was testimonial, but the DNA profile in Meekins was not. As an initial matter, neither forensic report was made “to nail down the truth about past criminal events” (majority op at 148, quoting Davis v Washington, 547 US 813, 830 [2006]). The police detective who conducted the fingerprint comparison juxtaposed fingerprint patterns (i.e., loops, arches or whorls) and ridge characteristics from the latent print report with candidate fingerprints identified by computer search of a statewide database, documenting his conclusions when he found a match so that they might be verified or rejected by another examiner and a supervisor. The technicians documenting the steps taken to create the DNA profile were likewise doing so to allow subsequent reviewers to verify their work. Neither forensic report says anything about a past crime; both describe present events—the results of standardized testing procedures. The fact that these documents can be used to build a case against defendants for past crimes does not turn them into descriptions of past events.
The majority also suggests that the fingerprint comparison was testimonial but the DNA profile was not because the “salient characteristic of objective, highly scientific testing like *162DNA analysis is that the results are not inherently biased toward inculpating the defendant; they can also exculpate. The inescapable corollary is that police or prosecutorial involvement is unlikely to have any impact on the test’s results” (majority op at 153). But fingerprint comparisons (although arguably not as “highly scientific” as DNA analysis) may also exculpate. Moreover, does the majority mean to suggest that if the police had contracted out the fingerprint comparison to a private laboratory (thus eliminating police and prosecutorial involvement), the resulting forensic report would have been nontestimonial?
Finally, the majority finds the fingerprint comparison in Rawlins “could be nothing but testimonial” because it was “inherently accusatory and offered to prove an essential element of the crimes charged” (majority op at 157). But the same could be said of McCottry’s statements in Davis, which the Supreme Court concluded were nontestimonial. Her statements not only provided evidence of defendant’s identity, but of other elements of the crime charged. The determinative factor was not the accusatory nature of what she said or whether it helped to establish defendant’s guilt (after all, if it had not, the People would not have offered it), but whether the statements resembled ex parte examinations.
Chief Judge Kaye and Judges Ciparick, Graffeo, Smith and Pigott concur with Judge Jones; Judge Read concurs in result in a separate opinion.
In each case: Order affirmed.