Melendez-Diaz Under Attack by Prosecutors

Apparently pros­e­cu­tors don’t like crim­i­nal defense attor­neys to cross-examine foren­sic sci­en­tists. They’d rather just have a piece of paper in court that can’t be cross-examined. To that goal the recent Melendez-Diaz deci­sion is up for review.

Prosecutors hope that the new Justice Sotomayor (an ex-prosecutor her­self) will side with them, throw due process out the window

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Laboratory Analyst Falsifies Lab Report

A foren­sic lab­o­ra­tory ana­lyst dry-labs cases. That is, they didn’t actu­ally per­form the foren­sic test­ing they are sup­posed to, and instead just sim­ply authors reports that indi­cate a crime has occurred.

A for­mer chemist with Erie County’s crime lab­o­ra­tory admit­ted she failed to con­duct the proper foren­sic tests in a local drug case, but authorities

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Creative Solution For Melendez-Diaz Testimony Complaints

If Arkansas can come up with a sim­ple way to allow ana­lysts to tes­tify with­out seri­ously effect­ing their abil­ity to con­tinue their lab­o­ra­tory duties, why all the hand-wringing and whin­ing in other states?

The link allows exam­in­ers at the crime lab to tes­tify with­out leav­ing their office.

“I’m very pleased with it and I’ve encour­aged the pros­e­cu­tors and

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Virginia sneaks around Melendez-Diaz, to deny 6th Amendment to Accused

Looks like Virginia, not happy with the US Supreme Court try­ing to ensure defen­dants’ 6th Amendment rights, is try­ing to find a sneaky way around the Melendez-Diaz ruling.

Following Melendez-Diaz, the Virginia leg­is­la­ture took action almost imme­di­ately. Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia called a spe­cial ses­sion of the leg­is­la­ture to amend the state’s statute gov­ern­ing the use

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The Sky is Falling!!! — More Melendez-Diaz Complaints

Here is another “scare tac­tic” arti­cle posted to show why it isn’t “fair” for the defen­dant to face their accuser — con­sti­tu­tional right be damned.

The state’s approx­i­mately 160 tech­ni­cians had been sub­poe­naed only 43 times in July 2008, but they were called a whop­ping 925 times in July 2009 after the high court ruling.

Very mis­lead­ing.

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