I saw this a few days ago and thought it would have made a splash by now.
It addresses the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Ammendment. To sum it up…"Absent stipulation, the Court ruled, the prosecution may not introduce such a report without offering a live witness competent to testify to the truth of the statements made in the report."
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I don't see many Defense Attorneys "stipulating" and although this case is one involving blood evidence in a DUI I can easily see that this will be broadened to include computers and cell phones as well.
Wasn't there a fifth circuit court decision on this a while back?
This issue can be dealt with (up here anyway) summarily if the defense "admits" the report. Typically it is done if the content will not be disputed. I can't say that I have ever seen it happen with computer evidence though, only such things as third party documents.
Wasn't there a fifth circuit court decision on this a while back?
Melendez-Diaz perhaps? Not fifth circuit, it came out of Mass and was decided by Sup Crt.
The gist is, in my opinion, that these cases (Bullcoming v New Mexico) and Melendez-Diaz go against
report in the present case was non-testimonial and prepared routinely with guarantees of trustworthiness
That is, there is no more reports which are prepared routinely with guarantees of trustworthiness.
And, I am perfectly okay with that.
On a side note, what happened to the analyst who was put on unpaid leave?!? If the leave was material to the report - misconduct, falsification, etc. as the defense attorney . . . that evidence (and probably hundreds before) would no longer be guaranteed of trustworthiness.
Wasn't there a fifth circuit court decision on this a while back?
Melendez-Diaz perhaps? Not fifth circuit, it came out of Mass and was decided by Sup Crt.
Ah! Thanks! At least I knew there was a ruling 😉
Patrick, when are you going to join Twitter?
I learned when I was young, that I should never say the first thing that pops into my head. As my CFCE peer reviewer Lannes from Texas says, the internet lets you make mistakes faster than anything on the planet with the exception of handguns and tequila. Hence no twitter account.
Ah, stuff it, I am as of 20 seconds ago, now Patrick4n6 on Twitter.
Tony welcome to the Twitter forensic community where it is recommended to combine tequila, hand guns and TweetDeck all at the same time.