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: Capital Defense Weekly

weekly email edition

By cdw

The weekly email edition is now available. From the intro: Leading off this week is the Supreme Court’s latest exploration of the Confrontation Clause, Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts. Justice Scalia’S 5-4 opinion holds there is no criminalist exception to the Sixth Amendment. Specifically,  the Commonwealth  below convicted Mr. Melendez-Diaz of certain narcotic offenses and used a forensic analyst’s report, without putting the criminalist actually on the stand, to assert that the drugs were in fact drugs. In the Supreme Court the Commonwealth argued that the analyst who performed the examination was not an accusatory witness. As Pate & Brody’s blog notes: The Court disagreed with the state and determined that a witness is not excused from testifying at trial simply because [the prosecution] did not interrogate the witness...continue to full post

Full post as published by Capital Defense Weekly on June 29, 2009 (boomark / email).