People v. McClanahan
Decision Date | 20 April 2000 |
Docket Number | No. 86953.,86953. |
Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee, v. Donald E. McCLANAHAN, Appellant. |
Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
Daniel D. Yuhas, Deputy Defender, Jacqueline L. Bullard, Assistant Defender, Office of the State Appellate Defender, Springfield, for Appellant.
James E. Ryan, Attorney General, Patrick W. Kelley, State's Attorney, Springfield (Joel D. Bertocchi, Solicitor General, William L. Browers, Mary Beth Burns and Colleen Griffin, Assistant Attorneys General, Chicago, of counsel), for the People.
At issue in this appeal is the constitutionality of section 115-15 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963 (725 ILCS 5/115-15 (West 1998)). This section allows the State, in prosecutions under the Cannabis Control Act (720 ILCS 550/1 et seq. (West 1998)) or the Illinois Controlled Substances Act (720 ILCS 570/100 et seq. (West 1998)), to use lab reports in lieu of actual testimony as prima facie evidence of the contents of the substance at issue unless the defendant files a demand for the testimony of the witness who prepared the report. The demand must be filed within seven days of the defense's receipt of the report.
Defendant, Donald E. McClanahan, was charged with unlawful possession of less than 15 grams of cocaine (720 ILCS 570/402(c) (West 1996)). The State filed supplemental discovery that included the state police crime lab report identifying the substance at issue as cocaine. The State also tendered the affidavit of Sandra Brown, who prepared the lab report. Eight months later, defendant filed a motion asking the State to call Sandra Brown as a witness at trial. The State objected, arguing that section 115-15 gave it the right to introduce the lab report into evidence without Brown's testimony.
Section 115-15 provides:
In his motion to compel the State to call Brown as a witness, defendant argued that the seven-day demand period was unconstitutional. The trial court denied both that motion and defendant's subsequent motion to reconsider. At trial, a police officer testified that, during a field test, the substance at issue in this case tested positive for cocaine. The State sought to use Brown's lab report and her accompanying affidavit to establish that the substance was in fact cocaine. The lab report and affidavit were admitted into evidence over defendant's objection. The jury found defendant guilty, and the trial court sentenced him to three years' imprisonment.
On appeal, defendant argued that section 115-15 is unconstitutional because it violates the confrontation clauses of the United States and Illinois Constitutions1 (U.S. Const., amend. VI; Ill. Const.1970, art. I, § 8) and because it allows defendants to unknowingly waive their constitutional confrontation rights. The appellate court disagreed and affirmed defendant's conviction and sentence. 301 Ill.App.3d 216, 234 Ill.Dec. 515, 703 N.E.2d 127.
We granted defendant's petition for leave to appeal. Defendant's argument in this court consists of two main points. The first focuses on the type of evidence that is admissible under the statute; the second focuses on the procedures that the statute requires a defendant to follow to secure his confrontation rights.2
A statute is presumed constitutional, and the party challenging the statute bears the burden of demonstrating its invalidity. In re K.C., 186 Ill.2d 542, 550, 239 Ill.Dec. 572, 714 N.E.2d 491 (1999). Whether a statute is constitutional is a question of law that we review de novo. People v. Fisher, 184 Ill.2d 441, 448, 235 Ill.Dec. 454, 705 N.E.2d 67 (1998)
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"The central concern of the Confrontation Clause is to ensure the reliability of the evidence against a criminal defendant by subjecting it to rigorous testing in the context of an adversary proceeding before the trier of fact." Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836, 845, 110 S.Ct. 3157, 3163, 111 L.Ed.2d 666, 678 (1990). The confrontation clause permits hearsay evidence to be admitted against a defendant only where either the evidence falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception or particularized guarantees of trustworthiness assure the reliability of the evidence. Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 2539, 65 L.Ed.2d 597, 608 (1980).
Defendant's first argument, that the statute violates the confrontation clause, consists of three prongs: (1) the statute does not require the State to establish the unavailability of the crime lab employee before introducing the lab report; (2) the statute neither falls within a firmly rooted hearsay exception nor requires particularized guarantees of trustworthiness; and (3) the statute is not necessary to further an important public policy. We agree with defendant's second point and thus see no need to address the other two arguments.
Defendant's argument is based primarily on Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 100 S.Ct. 2531, 65 L.Ed.2d 597 (1980), in which the Supreme Court held that hearsay evidence must possess certain indicia of reliability. Roberts, 448 U.S. at 65-66, 100 S.Ct. at 2538-39, 65 L.Ed.2d at 607-08.3 For the third prong of his argument, defendant relies on Craig, 497 U.S. at 850, 110 S.Ct. at 3166, 111 L.Ed.2d at 682, in which the Supreme Court held that a defendant's right to confront the witnesses against him may be denied only where that denial is necessary to further an important public policy. The State does not address these arguments on their merits, instead choosing to argue that section 115-15 does not create a confrontation clause problem because subsection (c) of the statute allows defendants to preserve their confrontation rights.
We agree with defendant. First, the evidence admissible pursuant to section 115-15 does not fall within a firmly rooted hearsay exception. In the trial court, the State argued that section 115-15 lab reports fall within the business records exception to the hearsay rule. This is unquestionably false. An exception to the business records hearsay exception are those writings or records that have "been made by anyone during an investigation of an alleged offense or during any investigation relating to pending or anticipated litigation of any kind." 725 ILCS 5/115-5(c)(2) (West 1998); People v. Smith, 141 Ill.2d 40, 72, 152 Ill.Dec. 218, 565 N.E.2d 900 (1990). The lab reports covered by section 115-15 are prepared during the course of criminal investigations and are requested by the State in anticipation of prosecutions.
Second, section 115-15 does not contain particularized guarantees of trust-worthiness. Essentially, the preparer of the report merely has to attest that he or she is qualified to conduct the test and that he or she used due caution and acted within established procedures. Indeed, in this case, the only information as to Sandra Brown's qualifications is her own statement in the affidavit that her "education, training and experience qualify [her] to perform the analyses conducted in this manner." The statute does not require the State to provide any information as to how the tests are conducted, what the accepted scientific procedures are, and what qualifications and training the crime lab employees must have. In other words, after the defendant has been arrested, the entity that seeks to prosecute him sends the evidence to its own lab for testing. The evidence is then admissible on nothing more than the vague assurances of the prosecuting authority's own employee that proper testing was done and that the employee is qualified to do the testing. The State does not argue, nor do we discern, that the statute contains particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.
In sum, we agree with defendant that the lab reports admissible pursuant to section 115-15 neither contain particularized guarantees of trustworthiness...
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