I will confess to not reading the Bullcoming opinion yet.

I will also confess that I just printed it and a whole bunch of commentary.

Off the bat, my first question is, how does this impact Melendez-Diaz and certificates of analysis?

It seemed Texas was on pretty solid ground under Melendez-Diaz because of the certificates. Is there a material change for us with Bullcoming?

(Of course, this may become crystal clear to me once I've read the case, but I thought I'd throw out the question to see if someone's already looked into this.)

My understanding of Bullcoming is that they filed under the Business Records exception an affidavit of the blood alcohol results. Then, instead of bringing the analyst who peformed the BAC, they brought an analyst who had no connection with the analysis done. The original analyst was fired or had the left the respective office. The prosecutor put on another analyst to testify to all the procedures of the lab but that analyst DID NOT GIVE AN INDEPENDENT OPINION OF HIS OWN ANALYSIS.

In other words, the analyst did not testify that he reviewed the work of the other analyst and based on his own review, the BAC was done correctly.

The Supreme Court says you can't do that. It really doesn't change Melendez-Diaz all that much, I think.

Melendez-Diaz = Drug Analysis
Bullcoming = Alcohol Analysis

That is the only difference, as far as I can tell. I don't know what all the hysteria was about with the Bullcoming opinion. It didn't say anything to me that wasn't already said with Melendez-Diaz. Likely the upcoming Williams v. Illinois will be of much more import to us than Bullcoming. In Williams, SCOTUS will be asked to decide if an expert witness put on the stand to analyze lab results and who had no part in making the analysis and no personal knowledge of how the test was done violates the Confrontation Clause. The state Supreme Court concluded that there was no violation of the suspect�s confrontation right, because the findings of the lab report were being admitted not for their truth, but only to explain the expert�s opinion about the results.

I am just copying and pasting my response from another post here.

I'm not sure how relevant this is as it happened in a Military Trial I was consulting on, but they do have to follow Supreme Court Rulings. They are certainly a different breed of trial.

The prosecution did not enter the multiple lab reports and testing into evidence. Instead, they relied on a different DNA analyst who separately evaluated the DNA electronic profiles and the DNA evidence alone was entered as evidence with the "new" analyst testifying to his findings.

We argued that the "House of DNA is built on the foundation of the previous testing" to no avail.

This allowed the prosecution to enter the evidence and avoid an otherwise unavailable scientist and also to avoid any questions about other lab testing.

Brilliant strategy if it works, in this case it did.

Dr. Monte Miller
mmiller@forensicdnaexperts.com
www.forensicdnaexperts.com

I'm in agreement that there's nothing really new in Bullcoming.

Provided the expert relies on the data to form his/her own opinion, there shouldn't be a problem.

On the surface this ruling seems daunting, but on closer inspection not so much is different from Melendez-Diaz.

First let me state the obvious. Forensic experts have to back up their reports by being available for cross-examination. All fine and good.

As a forensic expert witness I have seen a good prosecutor get around this decision by not introducing the official report but instead, having another expert read the electronic files and case file and come to their own independant opinion, then testify to that in court without introducing the original report.

The Justices have in their wording on the decision made this possible, but their wording also makes for an excellent rebuttal to that position possible, again leaving it to the discetion of the court.

I am wondering how this is going to play out in the future, likely different states will have different outcomes based on their own courts and we will seee this play out in the SCOTUS again in the future.

I do provide consultant services and seminars on this subject to law firms wishing to understand from a scientific, not legal, point of view. Even though I remain impartial, these discussions can become quite contentious.

mmiller@forensicdnaexperts.com
www.forensicdnaexperts.com

Dr. Monte Miller
mmiller@forensicdnaexperts.com
www.forensicdnaexperts.com