JUSTICES RULE LAB ANALYSTS MUST TESTIFY ON RESULTS

WASHINGTON -- Crime laboratory reports may not be used against
criminal defendants at trial unless the analysts responsible for
creating them give testimony and subject themselves to
cross-examination, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 5-to-4 decision.

The ruling was an extension of a 2004 decision that breathed new life
into the Sixth Amendment's confrontation clause, which gives a
criminal defendant the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him."

Four dissenting justices said that scientific evidence should be
treated differently than, say, statements from witnesses to a crime.
They warned that the decision would subject the nation's criminal
justice system to "a crushing burden" and that it means "guilty
defendants will go free, on the most technical grounds."

The two sides differed sharply about the practical consequences of
requiring testimony from crime laboratory analysts. Justice Anthony
M. Kennedy, writing for the four dissenters, said Philadelphia's 18
drug analysts will now each be required to testify in more than 69
trials next year, and Cleveland's six drug analysts in 117 trials each.

Noting that 500 employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
laboratory in Quantico, Va., conduct more than a million scientific
tests each year, Justice Kennedy wrote, "The court's decision means
that before any of those million tests reaches a jury, at least one
of the laboratory's analysts must board a plane, find his or her way
to an unfamiliar courthouse and sit there waiting to read aloud notes
made months ago."

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, scoffed at those
"back-of-the-envelope calculations."

In any event, he added, the court is not entitled to ignore even an
unwise constitutional command for reasons of convenience.

"The confrontation clause may make the prosecution of criminals more
burdensome, but that is equally true of the right to trial by jury
and the privilege against self-incrimination," Justice Scalia wrote.

"The sky will not fall after today's decision," he added.

But that is not how prosecutors saw it. "It's a train wreck," Scott
Burns, the executive director of the National District Attorneys
Association, said of the decision.

"To now require that criminalists in offices and labs that are
already burdened and in states where budgets are already being cut
back," Mr. Burns said, "to travel to courtrooms and wait to say that
cocaine is cocaine -- we're still kind of reeling from this decision."

Mr. Burns said complying with the ruling would be particularly tough
in large rural states with a single crime laboratory and in old cases
where the analyst has died or moved away.

The decision came in the wake of a wave of scandals at crime
laboratories that included hundreds of tainted cases in Michigan,
Texas and West Virginia. William C. Thompson, a professor of
criminology at the University of California, Irvine, said those
scandals proved that live testimony from analysts was needed to
explore potential shortcomings in laboratory reports.

"The person can be interrogated about the process, about the meaning
of the document," Professor Thompson said. "The lab report itself
cannot be interrogated to establish the strengths and limitations of
the analysis."

In February, the National Academy of Sciences issued a sweeping
critique of the nation's crime labs. It concluded, for instance, that
forensic scientists for law enforcement agencies "sometimes face
pressure to sacrifice appropriate methodology for the sake of expediency."

Cross-examination of witnesses, Justice Scalia wrote, "is designed to
weed out not only the fraudulent analyst, but the incompetent one as
well." He added that the Constitution would require allowing
defendants to confront witnesses even if "all analysts always
possessed the scientific acumen of Mme. Curie and the veracity of
Mother Teresa."

The case arose from the conviction of Luis E. Melendez-Diaz on
cocaine trafficking charges in Massachusetts. Part of the evidence
against him was a laboratory report stating that bags of white powder
said to have belonged to him contained cocaine. Prosecutors submitted
the report with only an analyst's certificate.

Jeffrey L. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford who represented Mr.
Melendez-Diaz, said perhaps a third of all states follow procedures
that comply with Thursday's decision. What that will mean as a
practical matter remains to be seen. Criminal defense lawyers may
still stipulate that crime lab reports are accurate, fearing that
live testimony will only underscore their clients' guilt. Others may
insist on testimony in the hope that the analyst will be unavailable.
Still others will now be able to prove that an analyst's conclusion
was mistaken or inconclusive.

"The defense bar today gains the formidable power to require the
government to transport the analyst to the courtroom at the time of
trial," Justice Kennedy wrote. The decision, Melendez-Diaz v.
Massachusetts, No. 07-591, featured some unusual alliances. The two
justices most closely associated with a commitment to following the
original meaning of the Constitution, Justices Scalia and Clarence
Thomas, were joined by three members of the court's liberal wing,
Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In addition to Justice Kennedy, the dissenters included two members
of the court's conservative wing, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., and the remaining liberal, Justice
Stephen G. Breyer.

Justice Kennedy said the majority had upended 90 years of settled law
from six federal appeals courts and courts in 35 states.

"The court's holding," Justice Kennedy wrote, "is a windfall to
defendants, one that is unjustified by a demonstrated deficiency in
trials, any well-understood historical requirement, or any
established constitutional precedent."