‘Surrogate Testimony’ Doesn’t Justify Admission of Lab Report, Supreme Court Rules
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the confrontation clause bars admission of a blood alcohol report even though a laboratory representative was available to testify.
The court held in a 5-4 decision (PDF) that “surrogate testimony” by another scientist who reviews the report does not satisfy the constitutional requirement. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion that resulted in a “fairly odd” lineup, in the words of SCOTUSblog.
Justice Antonin Scalia joined Ginsburg’s opinion in full, while Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Clarence Thomas joined all but Section IV of the opinion. In that section, Ginsburg wrote that the confrontation clause could have been satisfied by asking the scientist who was available for trial to retest the blood sample and testify about the results.
“The accused’s right is to be confronted with the analyst who made the certification,” Ginsburg wrote, “unless that analyst is unavailable at trial, and the accused had an opportunity, pretrial, to cross-examine that particular scientist.”
The dissenters argued that the majority had gone too far in extending the court’s 2009 decision in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts.
The case is Bullcoming v. New Mexico.