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Supreme Court narrows when lab reports can be used through expert testimony in Smith v. Arizona
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Summary
In Smith v. Arizona, the Supreme Court unanimously held that lab reports and notes created by an analyst who does not testify may be treated as coming in for their truth, remanding to determine whether the reports' primary purpose was testimonial and thus subject to the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause.
Jim Chance, senior judicial education attorney at the Federal Judicial Center, introduced Smith v. Arizona as a unanimous (9–0) Supreme Court decision addressing when expert testimony may rely on a non-testifying analyst's lab data. The court, Justice Kagan writing, focused the inquiry on whether the out-of-court statements were ‘‘testimonial’’ and thus protected by the Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses.
The case arose after a search produced a substance that a laboratory analyst, Elizabeth Rast, tested. Rast prepared lab notes and reports but then became unavailable to testify; a substitute expert, Gregory Longoni, testified at trial using Rast's notes and lab data and offered his own opinion that the substance was an illegal drug. Arizona courts had allowed Longoni's testimony on the theory that Rast's materials were not being admitted for their truth but only as the basis for Longoni's independent opinion.
The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed. The Court found that Rast's lab data, notes and reports had to be treated as coming in for the truth of the matter asserted. The Court applied a ‘‘primary purpose’’ inquiry for determining whether an out-of-court statement is testimonial: if the primary purpose of producing the record was to create evidence for use at trial, admission without the analyst's live testimony can violate the Confrontation Clause. The Court remanded for further proceedings to determine the primary purpose of the analyst's statements in the case.
Legal scholars on the Term Talk panel said the decision constrains how prosecutors can use substitute-expert testimony that relies on a non-testifying analyst's records. "Lower courts are going to have to exclude lab analyst reports when the prosecution cannot show the primary purpose was something other than producing evidence for trial," said Laurie Levinson, professor and David W. Bertram Chair in Ethical Advocacy at Loyola Law School. She noted proving a non-testimonial administrative purpose may be challenging in many forensic contexts.
The ruling reiterates earlier confrontation jurisprudence such as Crawford v. Washington and Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, while limiting the reach of Williams v. Illinois, which had allowed an expert to rely on a lab report in some circumstances. Practically, panelists said, judges must scrutinize whether records were created mainly to generate trial evidence and, if so, treat them as testimonial; if records are testimonial and the analyst is unavailable, the Confrontation Clause may bar admission absent an applicable exception.
The episode closed by noting that the Smith remand requires trial courts to examine the circumstances of lab reports and their preparation; the next procedural step will be whatever the remand directs at the lower-court level.
