This blog is devoted to reporting and commenting on developments related to Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004). Crawford transformed the doctrine of the Confrontation Clause, but it left many open questions that are, and will continue to be, the subject of a great deal of litigation and academic commentary.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Deepening Conflict on Lab Reports
Yesterday, in State v. March, 2007 WL 828156, the Missouri Supreme Court joined other jurisdictions in holding that a lab report prepared for use in prosecution is testimonial. I believe this result is clearly correct, and appropriately the court did not appear to endure much angst in reaching it. The decision sharpens the conflict among the states. The Supreme Court will have to resolve this matter, and in my view the sooner the better.
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3 comments:
Thanks for the update--time to send off supplemenal authority to the Florida Supreme Court..
so drug dealers walk because of crawford, but domestic assault defendants are going down even when the complaining witnesses dont bother showing up for trial, because their complaints are not "testimonial?" somethings rotten in denmark
Three days ago I filed a petition for cert attacking the Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court's Verde decision (applied by the Mass. Appeals Court to my case) allowing such certificates to be admitted pursuant to statute on the theory that "public records" are not testimonial under Crawford. At that time the split was 2 to 2 in 3 state highest courts and the Court of Appeals for DC. Now it looks like 3 - 2 and moving up.
Richard Klibaner
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