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Laird Kirkpatrick on forensic reports

By Richard D. Friedman

I previously posted an entry about Stuart v. Alabama and Justice Gorsuch's dissent from the denial of certiorari in that case.  Laird Kirkpatrick, who for decades has been one of the nation's outstanding Evidence scholars, has written a very fine analysis of that dissent and what it, and other auguries, suggest about the law governing the Confrontation Clause implications of forensic reports.  I'm attaching it here.  It has been published, without footnotes (and a slightly inaccurate bio; Laird has been teaching for a long time, but not at GW until the first decade of this century) in the University of Chicago Law Review Online.  He makes many excellent points.  I think his treatments of the "targeted individual" and formality tests are particularly telling.  And he gives reason to think that the Court may not be ready to turn its back on Crawford and Melendez-Diaz.

Full post as published by The Confrontation Blog on September 04, 2019 (boomark / email).