{"id":727,"date":"2009-07-06T17:42:13","date_gmt":"2009-07-06T15:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=727"},"modified":"2009-07-06T17:42:13","modified_gmt":"2009-07-06T15:42:13","slug":"the-court-gets-it-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=727","title":{"rendered":"The Court Gets it Right!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-77\" style=\"border: 0pt none; margin: 4px;\" title=\"Scales of Justice\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/justice.jpg\" alt=\"Scales of Justice\" width=\"113\" height=\"139\" \/>It&#8217;s so often that we see dismal decisions out of the Supreme Court that perhaps we should go to some additional effort to highlight good ones.\u00a0 On June 25th, the Court announced its decision in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supct\/html\/07-591.ZS.html\">Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (No. 07-591<\/a>).\u00a0 In this case, the defendant was accused of possession of cocaine, and what was entered into evidence was a certificate from a laboratory indicating what the substance was.\u00a0 Under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution, a defendant has the right to confront his or her accusers, something that is difficult when all that is presented is a certificate. Had the decision gone the other way, the state would in essence be able to write a note, excusing crucial experts from adversarial challenge, while yet admitting their evidence.\u00a0 And it&#8217;s not as if we haven&#8217;t seen <a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/US\/9704\/15\/fbi.crime.lab.update\/\">shoddy work by laboratories<\/a> in the past.\u00a0 While there are exceptions to the so-called <em>Confrontation Clause<\/em> do exist, they are limited to certain business records, and the unavailability of a material witness (e.g., a decedent in a murder trial).<\/p>\n<p>The funny thing is that in the states I&#8217;ve lived, anyone with a speeding ticket has had the right to question the guy who&#8217;s pulled him over, and that was for an infraction, and not a felony.\u00a0 I even know of people who have introduced evidence that challenged the validity of radar.<\/p>\n<p>This also goes to our previous discussion about technology changing how the law is applied.\u00a0 Today we have DNA tests that provide a relatively reliably test that when found indicate a person&#8217;s presence \u2013 <em><strong>by today&#8217;s standards<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Tomorrow&#8217;s approaches\u00a0 may once again upset the apple cart, but only if experts and methods can be challenged with those newer methods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s so often that we see dismal decisions out of the Supreme Court that perhaps we should go to some additional effort to highlight good ones.\u00a0 On June 25th, the Court announced its decision in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (No. 07-591).\u00a0 In this case, the defendant was accused of possession of cocaine, and what was entered &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=727\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Court Gets it Right!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=727"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":730,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}