Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, No. 07–591.

• Court: United States Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: Justice SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.
• Citation: 174 L.Ed.2d 314,557 U.S. 305,129 S.Ct. 2527
• Parties: Luis E. MELENDEZ–DIAZ, Petitioner, v. MASSACHUSETTS.
• Docket Number: No. 07–591.
• Decision Date: 25 June 2009

557 U.S. 305
129 S.Ct. 2527
174 L.Ed.2d 314

Luis E. MELENDEZ–DIAZ, Petitioner
v.
MASSACHUSETTS.

No. 07–591.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Nov. 10, 2008.
Decided June 25, 2009.

Jeffrey L. Fisher, Stanford, CA, for Petitioner.

Martha Coakley, Attorney General, Boston, MA, for Respondent.

Lisa H. Schertler, for United States as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the Respondent.

Mary T. Rogers, Salem, MA, Thomas C. Goldstein, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP, Washington, DC, Jeffrey L. Fisher, Pamela S. Karlan, Stanford, CA, Amy Howe, Kevin K. Russell, Howe & Russell, P.C., Bethesda, Md, for Petitioner.

Martha Coakley, Attorney General, James J. Arguin, David S. Friedman, Assistant Attorneys General, Boston, MA, for Respondent.

Opinion

Justice SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.

557 U.S. 307

The Massachusetts courts in this case admitted into evidence affidavits reporting the results of forensic analysis which showed that material seized by the police and connected to the defendant was cocaine. The question presented is whether those affidavits are “testimonial,” rendering the affiants “witnesses” subject to the defendant's right of confrontation under the Sixth Amendment.

I

In 2001, Boston police officers received a tip that a Kmart employee, Thomas Wright, was engaging in suspicious activity.

557 U.S. 308

The informant reported that Wright repeatedly received phone calls at work, after each of which he would be picked up in front of the store by a blue sedan, and would return to the store a short time later. The police set up surveillance in the Kmart parking lot and witnessed this precise sequence of events. When Wright got out of the car upon his return, one of the officers detained and searched him, finding four clear white plastic bags containing a substance resembling cocaine. The officer then signaled other officers on the scene to arrest the two men in the car—one of whom was petitioner Luis Melendez–Diaz. The officers placed all three men in a police cruiser.

During the short drive to the police station, the officers observed their passengers fidgeting and making furtive movements in the back of the car. After depositing the men at the station, they searched the police cruiser and found a plastic bag containing 19 smaller plastic bags hidden in the partition between the front and back seats. They submitted the seized evidence to a state laboratory required by law to conduct chemical analysis upon police request. Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 111, § 12 (West 2006).

Melendez–Diaz was charged with distributing cocaine and with trafficking in cocaine in an amount between 14 and 28 grams. Ch. 94C, §§ 32A, 32E(b)(1). At trial, the prosecution placed into evidence

129 S.Ct. 2531

the bags seized from Wright and from the police cruiser. It also submitted three “certificates of analysis” showing the results of the forensic analysis performed on the seized substances. The certificates reported the weight of the seized bags and stated that the bags “[h]a[ve] been examined with the following results: The substance was found to contain: Cocaine.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 24a, 26a, 28a. The certificates were sworn to before a notary public by analysts at the State Laboratory Institute of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, as required under Massachusetts law. Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 111, § 13.

557 U.S. 309

Petitioner objected to the admission of the certificates, asserting that our Confrontation Clause decision in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct. 1354, 158 L.Ed.2d 177 (2004), required the analysts to testify in person. The objection was overruled, and the certificates were admitted pursuant to state law as “prima facie evidence of the composition, quality, and the net weight of the narcotic ... analyzed.” Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 111, § 13.

The jury found Melendez–Diaz guilty. He appealed, contending, among other things, that admission of the certificates violated his Sixth Amendment right to be confronted with the witnesses against him. The Appeals Court of Massachusetts rejected the claim, affirmance order, 69 Mass.App. 1114, 870 N.E.2d 676, 2007 WL 2189152, *4, n. 3 (July 31, 2007), relying on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's decision in Commonwealth v. Verde, 444 Mass. 279, 283–285, 827 N.E.2d 701, 705–706 (2005), which held that the authors of certificates of forensic analysis are not subject to confrontation under the Sixth Amendment. The Supreme Judicial Court denied review. 449 Mass. 1113, 874 N.E.2d 407 (2007). We granted certiorari. 552 U.S. 1256, 128 S.Ct. 1647, 170 L.Ed.2d 352 (2008).

II

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, made applicable to the States via the Fourteenth Amendment, Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 403, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 13 L.Ed.2d 923 (1965), provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” In Crawford, after reviewing the Clause's historical underpinnings, we held that it guarantees a defendant's right to confront those “who ‘bear testimony’ ” against him. 541 U.S., at 51, 124 S.Ct. 1354. A witness's testimony against a defendant is thus inadmissible unless the witness appears at trial or, if the witness is unavailable, the defendant had a prior opportunity for cross-examination. Id., at 54, 124 S.Ct. 1354.

Our opinion described the class of testimonial statements covered by the Confrontation Clause as follows:

557 U.S. 310

“Various formulations of this core class of testimonial statements exist: ex parte in-court testimony or its functional equivalent—that is, material such as affidavits, custodial examinations, prior testimony that the defendant was unable to cross-examine, or similar pretrial statements that declarants would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially; extrajudicial statements ... contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions; statements that were made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial.” Id., at 51–52, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).

129 S.Ct. 2532

There is little doubt that the documents at issue in this case fall within the “core class of testimonial statements” thus described. Our description of that category mentions affidavits twice. See also White v. Illinois, 502 U.S. 346, 365, 112 S.Ct. 736, 116 L.Ed.2d 848 (1992) (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (“[T]he Confrontation Clause is implicated by extrajudicial statements only insofar as they are contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions”). The documents at issue here, while denominated by Massachusetts law “certificates,” are quite plainly affidavits: “declaration [s] of facts written down and sworn to by the declarant before an officer authorized to administer oaths.” Black's Law Dictionary 62 (8th ed.2004). They are incontrovertibly a “ ‘solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact.’ ” Crawford, supra, at 51, 124 S.Ct. 1354 (quoting 2 N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)). The fact in question is that the substance found in the possession of Melendez–Diaz and his codefendants was, as the prosecution claimed, cocaine—the precise testimony the analysts would be expected to provide if called at trial. The “certificates” are functionally identical

557 U.S. 311

to live, in-court testimony, doing “precisely what a witness does on direct examination.” Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813, 830, 126 S.Ct. 2266, 165 L.Ed.2d 224 (2006) (emphasis deleted).

Here, moreover, not only were the affidavits “ ‘made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial,’ ” Crawford, supra, at 52, 124 S.Ct. 1354, but under Massachusetts law the sole purpose of the affidavits was to provide “prima facie evidence of the composition, quality, and the net weight” of the analyzed substance, Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 111, § 13. We can safely assume that the analysts were aware of the affidavits' evidentiary purpose, since that purpose—as stated in the relevant state-law provision—was reprinted on the affidavits themselves. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 25a, 27a, 29a.

In short, under our decision in Crawford the analysts' affidavits were testimonial statements, and the analysts were “witnesses” for purposes of the Sixth Amendment. Absent a showing that the analysts were unavailable to testify at trial and that petitioner had a prior opportunity to cross-examine them, petitioner was entitled to “ ‘be confronted with’ ” the analysts at trial. Crawford, supra, at 54, 124 S.Ct. 1354.¹

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