Legal News

Coming Soon: A Little More Courtroom Time for CSI Workers

By Ashby Jones

It’s likely that more than a few of the nation’s prosecutors packed up their bags last night and went home feeling like their jobs just got a little tougher.

The reason: the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling on Thursday that crime laboratory reports may not be used against criminal defendants at trial unless the analysts who created them testify in court, thereby subjecting themselves to cross-examination. Click here for Adam Liptak’s NYT story; here to listen to Nina Totenberg’s report from NPR.

The ruling, which Totenberg called a “major jolt to the criminal justice system,” hinged on whether the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause bestows upon a criminal defendant the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him." The decision came in the wake of a wave of scandals at crime laboratories that included hundreds of tainted cases in a handful of states.

Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, held that more needs to be done to safeguard defendants’ rights. "The confrontation clause may make the prosecution of criminals more burdensome, but that is equally true of the right to trial by jury and the privilege against self-incrimination," Justice Scalia wrote. Joining Scalia were Justices Thomas, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens.

Justice Kennedy, writing for the four dissenting justices, said that scientific evidence should be treated differently than, say, statements from witnesses to a crime. He also warned that the decision would subject the nation's criminal justice system to "a crushing burden" and that it means "guilty defendants will go free, on the most technical grounds." According to Totenberg’s report, only 10 states have laws that comply with the Court’s decision.

For the most part, prosecutors didn’t seem too thrilled over the result. "It's a train wreck," Scott Burns, the executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said of the decision.

But Alabama deputy attorney general Corey Maze, told Totenberg the decision wasn’t as bad as it could have been, given that the Court provided some instruction on compliance. In Maze’s mind, the question becomes: “Do defense attorneys always demand the presence or do they do like they do currently, only demand it in 5-10% of cases. We won’t know that at least for the next couple of years.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 26, 2009 (boomark / email).