Court: Defendants Can Question Crime Lab

A 5-4 Supreme Court ruling yesterday gives defendants the chance to face authors of crime lab reports in their cases. Prosecutors who want to use lab testing undertaken for a given case will be required to bring its authors to court, where the defense can confront them. The ruling shows “a heavy dose of skepticism that crime lab reports are so reliable as to be beyond question,” writes Lyle Deniston in SCOTUSblog.

Labs aren’t always as “neutral or as reliable” as they’re said to be, wrote Antonin Scalia in the majority opinion; more important, the defendant has a right of confrontation. The court was divided on unusual lines, with three liberal justices and one conservative backing Scalia, and two conservatives and a liberal backing Anthony Kennedy’s dissent.
(More defendant stories.)