Lab Report not
admissible in DWI case
Bullcoming
v New Mexico 131 S. Ct. 2705 (2011), The
Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause gives the accused “[i]n all criminal
prosecutions, . . . the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against
him.” In Crawford v. Washington,
541 U. S. 36, 59, this Court held that the Clause permits admission of
“[testimonial statements of witnesses absent from trial . . . only where the
declarant is unavailable, and only where the defendant has had a prior
opportunity to cross-examine.” Later, in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S.Ct. 2527 (2009) the Court declined to create a
“forensic evidence” exception to Crawford,
holding that a forensic laboratory report, created specifically to serve as
evidence in a criminal proceeding, ranked as “testimonial” for Confrontation
Clause purposes. 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 report’s statements.
Petitioner
Bullcoming’s jury trial on charges of driving while intoxicated (DWI) occurred
after Crawford, but before Melendez-Diaz.
Principal evidence against him was a forensic laboratory report certifying that
his blood-alcohol concentration was well above the thresh- old for aggravated
DWI. Bullcoming’s blood sample had been tested at the New Mexico Department of
Health, Scientific Laboratory Division (SLD), by a forensic analyst named
Caylor, who completed, signed, and certified the report. However, the prosecution
neither called Caylor to testify nor asserted he was unavailable; the record
showed only that Caylor was placed on unpaid leave for an undisclosed reason.
In lieu of Caylor, the State called another analyst, Razatos, to validate the
report. Razatos was familiar with the testing device used to analyze
Bullcoming’s blood and with the laboratory’s testing procedures, but had
neither participated in nor observed the test on Bullcoming’s blood sample. Bullcoming’s
counsel objected, asserting that introduction of Caylor’s report without his
testimony would violate the Confrontation Clause, but the trial court overruled
the objection, admitted the SLD report as a business record, and permitted
Razatos to testify. Bullcoming was convicted, and, while his appeal was pending
before the New Mexico Supreme Court, this Court decided Melendez-Diaz.
JUSTICE GINSBURG delivered
the opinion of the Court with respect
to all but Part IV and footnote 6.
The Confrontation
Clause, the opinion concludes, does not permit the prosecution to introduce a
forensic laboratory report containing a testimonial certification, made in order
to prove a fact at a criminal trial, through the in-court testimony of an
analyst who did not sign the certification or personally perform or observe the
performance of the test reported in the certification. The accused’s right is
to be confronted with the analyst who made the certification, unless that
analyst is unavailable at trial, and the accused had an opportunity, pretrial,
to cross-examine that particular scientist.
(a) If an out-of-court statement is testimonial, it
may not be introduced against the accused at trial unless the witness who made
the statement is unavailable and the accused has had a prior opportunity to
confront that witness.
(i) Caylor’s certification reported more than a
machine-generated number: It represented that he received Bullcoming’s blood
sample intact with the seal unbroken; that he checked to make sure that the
forensic report number and the sample number corresponded; that he performed a
particular test on Bullcoming’s sample, adhering to a precise protocol; and
that he left the report’s remarks section blank, indicating that no
circumstance or condition affected the sample’s integrity or the analysis’
validity. These representations, relating to past events and human actions not
revealed in raw, machine- produced data, are meet for cross-examination. The
potential ramifications of the state court’s reasoning, therefore, raise red
flags. Most witnesses testify to their observations of factual conditions or
events. Where, for example, a police officer’s report recorded an objective
fact such as the read-out of a radar gun, the state court’s reasoning would
permit another officer to introduce the information, so long as he or she was
equipped to testify about the technology the observing officer deployed and the
police department’s standard operating procedures. As, e.g., Davis v. Washington,
547 U. S. 813, 826, makes plain, however, such testimony would violate the Confrontation
Clause. The comparative reliability of an analyst’s testimonial report does not
dispense with the Clause. Crawford, 541
U. S., at 62. The analysts who write reports introduced as evidence must be
made available for confrontation even if they have “the scientific acumen of
Mme. Curie and the veracity of Mother Teresa.” Melendez-Diaz, 557 U. S., at ___, n. 6.
(ii) Nor was Razatos an
adequate substitute witness simply because he qualified as an expert with
respect to the testing machine and the SLD’s laboratory procedures. Surrogate
testimony of the kind Razatos was equipped to give could not convey what Caylor
knew or observed about the events he certified, nor expose any lapses or lies
on Caylor’s part. Significantly, Razatos did not know why Caylor had been
placed on unpaid leave. With Caylor on the stand, Bullcoming’s counsel could
have asked Caylor questions designed to reveal whether Caylor’s incompetence,
evasiveness, or dishonesty accounted for his removal from work. And the State
did not assert that Razatos had any independent opinion concerning Bullcoming’s
blood alcohol content. More fundamentally, the Confrontation Clause does not
tolerate dispensing with confrontation simply because the court believes that
questioning one witness about another’s testimonial statements provides a fair
enough opportunity for cross-examination. Although the purpose of Sixth Amendment rights is to
ensure a fair trial, it does not follow that such rights can be disregarded
because, on the whole, the trial is fair. United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez,
548 U. S. 140 . If a
“particular guarantee” is violated, no substitute procedure can cure the
violation. Id., at 146.
(b) Melendez-Diaz
precluded the State’s argument that introduction of the SLD report did not
implicate the Confrontation Clause because the report is nontestimonial. Like
the certificates in Melendez-Diaz , the SLD report is undoubtedly an
“affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact” in a
criminal proceeding. 557 U. S., at ___. Created solely for an “evidentiary
purpose,” id., at ___, the report ranks as testimonial. In all material
respects, the SLD report resembles the certificates in Melendez-Diaz .
Here, as there, an officer provided seized evidence to a state laboratory
required by law to assist in police investigations. Like the Melendez-Diaz analysts,
Caylor tested the evidence and prepared a certificate concerning the result of
his analysis. And like the Melendez-Diaz certificates, Caylor’s report
here is “formalized” in a signed document, Davis , 547
U. S., at 837, n. 2. Also noteworthy, the SLD report form contains a
legend referring to municipal and magistrate courts’ rules that provide for the
admission of certified blood-alcohol analyses. Thus, although the SLD report
was not notarized, the formalities attending the report were more than adequate
to qualify Caylor’s assertions as testimonial.
