By Lisa Redmond
Lowell Sun
A recent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that allows defendants to cross-examine in court the state lab and ballistics experts who analyze drugs and bullets, instead of just supplying lab certifications, will increase state expenses and slow cases to a crawl, Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone warned.
While Leone doesn’t expect the outcome of these criminal cases will be different, he said “it is certain to significantly impact the timely and orderly administration of justice in conducting trials and disposing of cases.”
In a 5-4 decision last week, the high court ruled that the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right to confront witnesses, extends to forensic experts, such as those from the state labs who weigh and certify drugs in a case or test firearms to see if they work and the type of bullets they fire.
The ruling overturns a Massachusetts law that allowed prosecutors across the state to present certifications, especially in drug cases, without calling into court the forensic expert who did the actual testing.
The decision was based on a Boston drug case, Melendez-Diaz vs. Massachusetts, in which state Attorney General Martha Coakley argued before the high court that the right to cross-examine a witness did not apply.
She contends that the state lab could be overwhelmed if forensic experts from the Department of Public Health, the State Police and the University of Massachusetts have to testify in the approximately 60,000 drug cases handled by state courts each year. An estimated 5 percent of those cases go to trial. If experts are not available to testify, Coakley fears a judge could dismiss the cases.
“We are very disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision today in the Melendez-Diaz case. The majority in this 5-4 decision rejected the reasoning of the Massachusetts Appeals Court and Supreme Judicial Court that permitted routine drug test results to be admitted at trial without requiring live testimony from the laboratory analysts,’' Coakley said.
To accommodate the ruling, Leone said the state will have to bear a “significant increase in public expense as the chemists, ballasticians and other government witnesses from our state laboratories will now have the additional burden of being routinely scheduled to testify in criminal cases.”
John Grossman, the state’s public-safety undersecretary of forensic science and technology, said the state would have to hire 100 chemists at a cost of about $5 million if experts must be made available to testify.
In light of the ruling, Coakley said she would introduce state legislation that would allow prosecutors to alert defendants that the state is going to submit lab reports into evidence and give the defense an opportunity to waive its right to cross examine the lab expert.
The benefit to the defense from such a bill is that an expert wouldn’t provide testimony that reinforces damaging evidence.
The New York-based Innocence Project, which has helped to free two local men using DNA evidence, applauded the high court ruling.
“This is an important decision that will help defendants expose faulty evidence at trial, but it doesn’t resolve the serious underlying problems with forensic science,” said Innocence Project Co-director Peter Neufeld.
In about half of the 240 DNA exonerations nationwide, faulty forensic science contributed to the underlying wrongful convictions, according to the Innocence Project.
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