US Supreme Court fractures on expert testimony issue

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The Confrontation Clause does not bar an expert from testifying at a criminal trial that a DNA profile produced by an outside laboratory matched the defendant’s state lab DNA profile, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a fractured opinion.

The case stemmed from a bench trial for rape, during which a forensic specialist testified that a DNA profile produced by an outside laboratory matched a profile produced by a state lab using blood obtained from the defendant after he was arrested on drug charges. The profile produced by the outside laboratory was from a vaginal swab taken from a woman who was abducted and raped earlier in the year.

The defendant objected to the expert’s testimony, arguing that it violated the Confrontation Clause since the technician who created the profile from the outside lab was not present and available for cross-examination.

The judge overruled the objection and the defendant was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Both the Illinois Appellate Court and the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the conviction. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and heard arguments in the case in December.

In a divided opinion, the court affirmed. A four-justice plurality, in an opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito Jr., held that “this form of expert testimony does not violate the Confrontation Clause because that provision has no application to out-of-court statements that are not offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted.”

“When an expert testifies for the prosecution in a criminal case, the defendant has the opportunity to cross-examine the expert about any statements that are offered for their truth,” Alito wrote. “Out-of-court statements that are related by the expert solely for the purpose of explaining the assumptions on which that opinion rests are not offered for their truth and thus fall outside the scope of the Confrontation Clause.”

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer joined Alito’s plurality decision.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately concurring in the judgment, but noting that he reached this conclusion “solely because [the] statements lacked the requisite ‘formality and solemnity’ to be considered ‘testimonial’ for purposes of the Confrontation Clause,” and adding that he “share[d] the dissent’s view of the plurality’s flawed analysis.”

Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissent, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

“In two decisions issued in the last three years, this court held that if a prosecutor wants to introduce the results of forensic testing into evidence, he must afford the defendant an opportunity to cross-examine an analyst responsible for the test,” Kagan wrote. “Forensic evidence is reliable only when properly produced, and the Confrontation Clause prescribes a particular method for determining whether that has happened.”

U.S. Supreme Court. Williams v. Illinois, No. 10-8505.