Just last June, the Supreme Court decided that when prosecutors rely on lab reports they must call the experts who prepared them to testify. It was an important ruling, based on a defendant’s right to be confronted with witnesses against him, but the court is about to revisit it. The justices should reaffirm that the Sixth Amendment requires prosecutors to call the lab analysts whose work they rely on.
On Monday, the court hears arguments in Briscoe v. Virginia, in which a man was convicted on drug charges. The prosecutors relied on certificates prepared by forensic analysts to prove that the substance seized was cocaine. They did not call the analysts as witnesses.
The defendant should be able to get his conviction overturned based on Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, the ruling from last June, which held, by a 5-to-4 vote, that using lab reports without calling the analysts violates the Sixth Amendment.
The amendment’s confrontation clause guarantees defendants the right to see prosecution witnesses in person and to cross-examine them, unless they are truly unavailable. In cases that involve drugs, and many that do not, lab analysts’ work can be a critical part of the prosecution’s case. If the prosecutors want to use the reports, they should be required to call the analysts as witnesses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/opinion/11mon2.html?th&emc=th
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