Friday, September 15, 2017

Another look at the Craig-Crawford disjuncture?

Crawford did not purport to disturb Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 (1990), which allowed a prosecutor in some circumstances to present the testimony of a child by electronic transmission from a place outside the physical presence of the accused.  But Craig was based on the flexible approach to the Confrontation Clause of Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56 (1980), which Crawford overturned.  It is not surprising that Justice Scalia, the author of Crawford, wrote a bitter dissent in Craig, a 5-4 case, and that Justice O'Connor, the author of Craig, was one of two members of the Court not to join the majority opinion in Crawford:  The two opinions reflect radically different views of the Confrontation Clause.  Up til now, the Supreme Court has declined to discuss what the standing of Craig is in light of Crawford.  It has certainly had opportunities.  For example, see here and here. Now Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit has written a concurrence in a decision, United States v. Cox, strongly suggesting that the Supreme Court ought to take the matter up.   We'll see what happens. The justices won't necessarily take up Judge Sutton's suggestion, but his is a voice to which they will likely pay attention.

Cox involves electronically transmitted testimony by a third-grader and a sixth-grader.  Other child witnesses evidently testified live at the trial.

Scotusblog piece on the effects of Melendez-Diaz

Scotusblog recently ran a piece by Andrew Hamm titled Looking back at predictions in Melendez-Diaz v. MassachusettsHere is a link. 

I think it's fair to say that this article bears out the conclusion that, despite the dire predictions made by Justice Kennedy of how devastating Melendez-Diaz would be to the criminal justice system, the actual effect has been rather modest.  There was, at least in some states, an initial period of adjustment, as one would expect.  And it may be that defendants' hands in plea bargaining have been strengthened slightly -- but that's not inappropriate, because if defendants' rights have been ignored and are then restored, their bargaining hands should be strengthened.  The Scotusblog article reports the findings of a Ph.D. dissertation by Catherine Bonventre concluding that the effects of Melendez-Diaz have been "none to minimal.  It also uses a study that I supervised, previously reported on this blog, indicating that even in DNA cases adhering to the confrontation right does not result in a parade of lab witnesses.

The Scotusblog article also summarizes the argument made by Sean Driscoll that the case of Annie Dookhan, who was cross-examined 150 times without her years of lab fraud being discovered shows the futility of cross in this context.  I certainly don't think it's a panacea, and it may be that a determined liar like Dookhan will often not be exposed on cross.  But I think the principal value of cross, or the possibility of it, in this context is that the practice of lab techs is likely to be considerably more careful if they know they may have to answer questions under oath about what they have done.