{"id":8539,"date":"2010-01-13T23:14:02","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T04:14:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=8539"},"modified":"2010-01-13T23:16:31","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T04:16:31","slug":"seventh-circuit-weighs-in-on-crime-lab-evidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/01\/seventh-circuit-weighs-in-on-crime-lab-evidence\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventh Circuit Weighs in on Crime-Lab Evidence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"seventhThe Supreme Court was not the only court wrestling this week with the admissibility of crime-lab evidence.\u00a0\u00a0A day after\u00a0the Justices heard oral argument in Briscoe v. Virginia<\/em><\/a>, the Seventh Circuit decided United States v. Turner <\/a><\/em>(No. 08-3109).\u00a0 Both cases put into question the vitality of Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, <\/em>129 S. Ct. 2527 (2009).<\/p>\n

A jury convicted Turner of selling crack to an undercover police officer.\u00a0 The drugs were sent to the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory, where they were analyzed by a chemist named Hanson, who confirmed that they were indeed crack.\u00a0\u00a0The government\u00a0intended to call Hanson to testify to this effect, but she went on maternity leave before the trial.\u00a0 So Hanson’s supervisor, Block, was summoned instead.\u00a0 Based on Hanson’s notes and data, Block testified that he agreed with her conclusion that the drugs were crack.<\/p>\n

On appeal, Turner argued that Block’s testimony violated Melendez-Diaz<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Melendez-Diaz <\/em>held (on Confrontation Clause grounds) that the government may not simply submit a written report from a crime-lab analyst in lieu of calling the analyst\u00a0to testify and giving the defendant a shot at cross-examination.\u00a0 Although Turner <\/em>did not involve the use of a written report in lieu of live testimony, it is not hard to see why the defendant thought there might be a connection between the cases: in his testimony,\u00a0Block relied on the data collected by another analyst, and that\u00a0analyst was not made available for cross-examination.\u00a0 Just like Melendez-Diaz, then,\u00a0Turner was denied\u00a0an opportunity to cross-examine the person who was actually responsible for handling and testing the evidence used against him.<\/p>\n

An earlier Seventh Circuit decision, United States v. Moon<\/em>, 512 F.3d 359 (7th Cir. 2008), apparently supported the view that an expert witness like Block may properly rely on the information gathered and produced by a lab employee who does not testify at trial.\u00a0 But Moon <\/em>predated Melendez-Diaz<\/em> — could it be that the more recent Supreme Court decision effectively overturned Moon?<\/em><\/p>\n

The Seventh Circuit declined to read Melendez-Diaz <\/em>so expansively.\u00a0 The court relied on the fact that Hanson’s written report was not admitted as evidence, in contrast to the analysts’ reports in Melendez-Diaz.<\/em>\u00a0 This may be a sensible way of distinguishing Melendez-Diaz<\/em>, but I do\u00a0wonder whether Turner <\/em>makes it too easy for the government to circumvent the right recognized in Melendez-Diaz <\/em>for defendants to cross-examine crime-lab analysts in order to\u00a0expose work that was shoddy or corrupt.\u00a0 (Melendez-Diaz <\/em>discussed at length a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences that was highly critical of crime-lab practices.)\u00a0 On the other hand, as I suggested in an earlier post<\/a>, the Supreme Court itself may be poised to gut Melendez-Diaz <\/em>in Briscoe.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court was not the only court wrestling this week with the admissibility of crime-lab evidence.\u00a0\u00a0A day after\u00a0the Justices heard oral argument in Briscoe v. Virginia, the Seventh Circuit decided United States v. Turner (No. 08-3109).\u00a0 Both cases put into question the vitality of Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S. Ct. 2527 (2009). A jury […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,88,28,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-evidence","category-criminal-law-process","category-seventh-circuit","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}