State v. Caulfield, No. A04-1484 (MN 8/2/2005)
| Decision Date | 02 August 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. A04-1484.,A04-1484. |
| Parties | State of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Scott Caulfield, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Appeal from the District Court, Olmsted County, File No. K0-02-2958.
Mike Hatch, Attorney General, and Raymond F. Schmitz, Olmsted County Attorney, Daniel P. H. Reiff, Assistant County Attorney, (for respondent).
John M. Stuart, State Public Defender, Roy G. Spurbeck, Assistant State Public Defender, (for appellant).
Considered and decided by Halbrooks, Presiding Judge; Minge, Judge; and Parker, Judge.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
In this appeal from conviction of a third-degree controlled substance offense, Scott Caulfield argues that the district court abused discretion by admitting into evidence a Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) laboratory report stating that the substance seized from him contained cocaine. He contends that, under the rule of Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 124 S. Ct. 1354 (2004), the report should be considered "testimonial" and that its admission under Minn. Stat. § 634.15 (2000) without the present testimony of the preparing analyst violated his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. Because we conclude that, even if the district court abused discretion in admitting the report, its admission was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, we affirm.
Olmsted County police responded to a call from Kathy's Pub in Rochester to investigate a report of a person selling narcotics. The police had directed bar employees to call them if a particular person, who was suspected of selling controlled substances, entered the bar. Two bartenders observed this person entering and leaving the bar two to ten times in a typical evening. He would leave by the back door with another person, whom he would have met in the bar and who did not usually order a drink. They would be gone for about ten or fifteen minutes, and he would then return alone.
When the police officer responded to the call, he approached Caulfield, a frequent patron, and asked for identification, which Caulfield provided. They then stepped outside, where the officer told Caulfield he was investigating the sale of narcotics and asked whether Caulfield had drugs on his person. Caulfield replied that he did not, but consented to a search of his person. Inside Caulfield's left front pants pocket, the officer found a small Tylenol bottle containing six small plastic bags, each containing a white powder. When the officer asked him what was in the bags, Caulfield replied that it was "drugs" and that it was cocaine.
The officer testified that he arrested Caulfield and took possession of the Tylenol bottle and its contents. The same evening, he tested the contents of one of the bags with a standard field test for cocaine; the substance tested positive for the presence of cocaine. Another investigating officer, who had eighteen years of police experience, testified that the following day, he retrieved the evidence bags from the evidence technician. He unsealed them, weighed the substance separately from the bags, and performed another field test on the substance. That test also produced a positive result for cocaine. He then repackaged the substance in a single evidence bag and sent it to the BCA for further testing. The BCA test produced a laboratory report stating that the substance weighed 2.2 grams and contained cocaine. The laboratory report was signed and certified as accurate by the analyst, a forensic scientist who conducted the test.
The state charged Caulfield by amended complaint with a third-degree controlled-substance crime under Minn. Stat. § 152.023, subd. 1(1) (2000) for sale of a mixture containing a narcotic drug, and a fifth-degree controlled substance crime under Minn. Stat. § 152.025, subd. 2(1) (2000) for possession of a mixture containing a controlled substance. The district court held a bench trial after Caulfield waived his right to a jury trial. At trial, Caulfield challenged the admission of the BCA report without the testimony of the analyst who prepared it. He argued that the report was "testimonial" under the rule of Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 59-62, 124 S. Ct. 1354, 1369-71 (2004), and that its admission without the analyst's testimony under the Minnesota notice-and-demand statute, Minn. Stat. § 634.15 (2000), violated his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation. The district court admitted the report, and Caulfield was convicted of controlled substance crime in the third degree and the lesser-included offense. This appeal followed.
A district court's evidentiary rulings lie within its sound judgment and will not be disturbed absent an abuse of discretion. State v. Amos, 658 N.W.2d 201, 203 (Minn. 2003). If the district court has erred in admitting evidence, this court determines whether a reasonable possibility exists that the wrongfully admitted evidence significantly affected the verdict. State v. Post, 512 N.W.2d 99, 102 n.2 (Minn. 1994). But if an evidentiary ruling involves constitutional error, the reviewing court looks to the basis of the verdict and will not require a new trial if the error is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Jones, 556 N.W.2d 903, 910 (Minn. 1996).
The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him." U.S. Const. amend. VI. The Minnesota Constitution affords the same right; the analysis is the same under both provisions. See Minn. Const. art. I, § 6.
Minn. Stat. § 634.15 (2000) allows, in a criminal trial, the admission into evidence of "facts and results of a laboratory analysis or examination" that are "prepared and attested by the person performing the laboratory analysis or examination" and conducted in a laboratory operated or authorized by the BCA. The statute provides that, if the defendant wishes to request testimony by the person who performed the test, the defendant must give the state notice ten days in advance of the request that the analyst testify at trial, in person, on behalf of the state. Id., subd. 2.
Caulfield contends that the district court abused discretion by admitting the laboratory report under Minn. Stat. § 634.15 without the testimony of the preparing analyst because the report is "testimonial" under Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36, 59-62, 124 S. Ct. 1354, 1369-71 (2004). He further argues that the admission of the report violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses against him.
In Crawford, the United States Supreme Court reexamined the admissibility of out-of-court statements of unavailable witnesses in a criminal trial through the lens of the Sixth Amendment. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 59-62, 124 S. Ct. at 1369-71. In so doing, the Court rejected its previous analysis in Ohio v. Roberts, which had allowed the admission of such out-of-court statements, provided that they bore sufficient indicia of reliability. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66, 100 S. Ct. 2531, 2539 (1980), abrogated by, Crawford, 541 U.S. at 62-65, 124 S. Ct. at 1371-72. To satisfy the Roberts test, a statement needed either to fall within a "firmly rooted hearsay exception" or to bear "particularized guarantees of trustworthiness." Id.
The Supreme Court in Crawford stated that the Sixth Amendment right to confront one's accuser cannot be satisfied by the reliability analysis in Roberts when "testimonial" statements are at issue. Crawford, 541 U.S. at 61-63, 124 S. Ct. at 1370-71. Rather, the Confrontation Clause acts as a procedural guarantee which "commands, not that evidence be reliable, but that reliability be assessed in a particular manner: by testing in the crucible of cross-examination." Id. at 61, 124 S. Ct. at 1370. Thus, the Court held that the Sixth Amendment bars out-of-court, "testimonial" statements from admission into evidence unless the hearsay declarant is unavailable and the defendant has had a prior opportunity to examine the declarant. Id. at 68, 124 S. Ct. at 1374.
The Court declined to provide a comprehensive definition of "testimonial," but furnished "various formulations of [a] core class of `testimonial' statements." Id.at 51, 124 S. Ct. at 1364. These formulations include: (1) "ex parte in-court testimony or its functional equivalent," including affidavits, custodial examinations, prior testimony not subject to cross-examination, or "similar pretrial statements that declarants would reasonably expect to be used prosecutorially"; (2) "extrajudicial statements" of a kind "contained in formalized testimonial materials"; and (3) statements 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. at 1364. The Court also specified that the term applied, "at a minimum," to prior testimony at a preliminary hearing, previous trial, or grand jury proceedings, and police interrogations. Id. at 68, 124 S. Ct. at 1374.
The Minnesota Supreme Court has not yet articulated a comprehensive definition of "testimonial" statements under the rule in Crawford. In State v. Martin, the supreme court held that the district court did not abuse discretion by admitting a victim's statement under the dying declaration exception to the Crawford rule because the Sixth Amendment incorporates this exception. Martin, 695 N.W.2d 578, 585 (Minn. 2005). The supreme court stated,
We are not unsympathetic to the uncertainty that has been generated by the [United States] Supreme Court's refusal to articulate a comprehensive definition of "testimonial" statements. But, we need not decide in this case whether [the statement] was testimonial and, therefore, this court must also "leave for another day" any effort to...
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