Supreme Court Wrap-Up

That politics make strange bedfellows is a cliche.  When jurisprudence makes strange bedfellows, though, it's still newsworthy.

So it was yesterday when Antonin Scalia found himself on the same side of an opinion with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, and John Paul Stevens.

(Digression: Well, and Clarence Thomas, but, y'know, Thomas is really just Scalia's sock-puppet.  Has anyone else noticed that we really only have eight Supreme Court justices, one of whom [Scalia] gets two votes, his own and Thomas's?  Probably.  That's too obvious to have been original to the Solipsist.  Not that we won't take credit for it. EOD)

Where were we?  Ah, yes.

The case in question, Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, turned on the question of whether laboratory reports may be used as evidence in criminal trials if the analyst who prepares the report does not testify in court ("Justices Rule Lab Analysts Must Testify on Results").  The majority ruled that it could not.  If we examine the reasoning, it's not surprising that Scalia came down on the ostensibly liberal side of the issue: As a strict constructionist, Scalia feels that the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees a defendant's right "to be confronted with witnesses against him," reasonably encompasses the right to cross-examine the technicians who prepare reports that could lead to a conviction.  As part of his decision, Scalia noted that "the Constitution would require allowing defendants to confront witnesses even if 'all analysts always possessed the scientific acumen of Mme. Curie and the veracity of Mother Teresa.'"

(Digression: He may be something of a fascist, but, credit where credit is due, the man can write. EOD)

The dissenters fretted over the procedural issues this ruling may provoke.  The fear is that, if every defendant demands that lab analysts appear in court, the criminal justice system will grind to a halt.  In the face of financial crises, can states and other jurisdictions reasonably be expected to incur the new costs associated with assuring that lab analysts can appear at every trial in which they will be required to testify?  Maybe not, but that's not really the issue.  As we mentioned in our post of June 19, financial concerns should not be the basis of Supreme Court jurisprudence.

Indeed, we suspect that the logistical issues will largely sort themselves out.  After all, just because defendants have the right to have lab analysts testify, this doesn't mean they will exercise that right.  Defense lawyers are likely to conclude that a lab analyst's testimony is at least as likely to harm their clients as it is to help them.  Still, if we play out the scenario, the ramifications are not all bad.

Let's say a number of defense attorneys take advantage of this new ruling as a gambit for dismissal: Presumably, if the state is unable or unwilling to ensure a lab analyst's appearance at a trial, then a judge would, eventually, have no choice but to dismiss the case.  A defense attorney could reasonably decide that allowing for this possibility is a sound legal strategy, and it is, as far as it goes.  But for this very reason, it could lead to some positive changes.

For example, imagine two trials are scheduled for the same day: one a felony drug possession, the other a murder.  Imagine further that both cases hinge on laboratory evidence and that the same analyst prepared the reports for both cases.  For the sake of argument, let's say that neither case can be delayed.  So what's going to happen?  Which trial do you suppose the analyst is going to attend?  Presumably, the murder trial.  So what becomes of the drug possession case?  It gets dismissed.  In other words, an alleged drug user goes free so that an alleged murderer can be convicted.

This strikes us as a reasonable trade-off.  And if this kind of thing happens enough, maybe that could set us along the road toward legalization--or at least decriminalization--of drugs.  A thoroughly desirable outcome, made all the sweeter by imagining the look on Scalia's face when he realizes it was HIS decision that set the stage!

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In another case decided yesterday, the strange bedfellowing continued with the decision that a school district went overboard when they strip-searched a 13-year-old girl suspected of concealing prescription-strength ibuprofen in her underwear ("Supreme Court Says Child's Rights Violated by Strip Search").  The majority for this case, Safford Unified School District v. Redding, was less remarkable, as the decision was nearly unanimous.  Interestingly, this case broke the Scalia-Thomas bond, as Clarence Thomas was the lone troglodyte who dissented from the decision.  He worried that the Court's decision "provided the nation's students a court-sanctioned hiding place."

Well, yes, we suppose it does.  Of course, this also means that, when high-school students buy drugs from the greasy, acne-scarred, 20-year-old senior in the bathroom, they'll know EXACTLY where those pills were stashed, and they may think twice about popping them into their mouths.