On June 25, 2009, a divided Supreme Court extended the reach of the Confrontation Clause in Melendez-Diaz v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts.1 In the 5-4 decision, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court held that the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment bars prosecutors from using certified laboratory reports at trial in lieu of witness testimony. To get a laboratory report admitted at trial, prosecutors must now call the laboratory analyst who conducted the test and subject that witness to cross-examination at trial.
Melendez-Diaz is a reaffirmation and extension of Crawford v. Washington, the landmark 2004 decision concerning the admissibility of testimonial hearsay at trial.2 Melendez-Diaz directly rejects the admissibility of only a single type of evidence—certified laboratory reports—but the Court’s reasoning casts a broader shadow. Ultimately, Melendez-Diaz calls into question the procedure by which prosecutors lay a foundation for admission of business records via affidavits, a practice explicitly permitted by the Federal Rules of Evidence.
