Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
The nation’s highest court won’t take a case from the Indiana Supreme Court, which decided last year that it
did not violate a man’s Sixth Amendment rights for a lab technician who’d processed DNA evidence to not testify
at trial.
Justices on the Supreme Court of the United States met in private conference last week to consider the case of Richard
Pendergrass v. Indiana, No. 09-866 from St. Joseph County. The issue was whether the Confrontation Clause permits the
prosecution to introduce DNA profiles created by a certain chemical process as recorded by a “non-testifying”
lab analyst and a computer, and having the analyst’s supervisor and a forensic DNA expert testify rather than the person
who actually did the work.
The SCOTUS denied the writ of certiorari, likely because the court had decided a similar case on that issue last year and
didn’t see a need to revisit it here.
This decision leaves in place the Indiana justices’ split-decision from September in Richard Pendergrass v. State of Indiana, No. 71S03-0808-CR-445.
In that decision, a majority found that the proof submitted during the Pendergrass trial was consistent with the Sixth Amendment
based on the SCOTUS ruling in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S. Ct. 2527 (2009), decided just months before.
In that case, no witnesses were called to testify on the certificates of analysis that said the substance found in seized
bags was cocaine. The SCOTUS held those certificates were testimonial and the defendant had the right to confront those who
swore to the accuracy of the tests.
The Indiana justices in Pendergrass interpreted the majority opinion in Melendez-Diaz to say that not everyone
who worked on the evidence must be called and the Confrontation Clause leaves discretion with the prosecution on which evidence
to present. They believed Pendergrass' right to confrontation wasn't violated because the lab technician's supervisor,
who personally checked the test results, and an expert who used that data to interpret the results were put on the stand for
cross-examination during his trial.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.