More on Melendez-Diaz

The fol­low­ing arti­cle can be viewed in full here.

The arti­cle opens up with this statement:

Get ready to trade your lab coat for a suit coat. A U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing last Thursday will require crime lab ana­lysts to appear in court and sub­mit to cross-examination if their reports are entered into evi­dence. This rul­ing could have tremen­dous impacts on how crime labs oper­ate and exac­er­bate the back­log prob­lems that plague crime labs nationwide.

It’s inter­est­ing to see the point of view from peo­ple who appar­ently don’t already have state laws that enforce this rule. Please note the indi­vid­ual states will put some kind of rules in place, but one would expect the expert to not have to show up, if both side stip­u­late to the results of the analysis.

If they don’t stip­u­late the only change here is the bur­den is being put on the state to have their wit­ness present, instead of the defense hav­ing to hunt down the wit­nesses for the state.