Petition for certiorari - SCOTUSblog

INTRODUCTION
This case presents a pressing issue concerning
the administration of criminal justice across the
country, and over which the federal and state courts
are openly and deeply divided: whether state forensic
laboratory reports prepared for use in criminal prosecutions
are "testimonial" evidence, and thus subject
to the demands of the Confrontation Clause as set
forth in Crawford y. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004).
The Appeals Court of Massachusetts, following a
binding decision from the Massachusetts Supreme
Judicial Court, held in this case that they are not.
Until quite recent times, this Court and others
generally assumed that the Sixth Amendment required
the prosecution, absent a stipulation from a
defendant, to present the findings of its forensic
examiners through live testimony at trial. See, e.g.,
United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 227-28 (1967)
(forensic analyses of fingerprints, blood and hair
samples, etc.); Diaz y. United States, 223 U.S. 442, 450
(1912) (autopsy reports); State v. Henderson, 554
S.W.2d 117, 120 (Tenn. 1977) (surveying lower courts).
However, following this Court’s decision in Ohio v.
Roberts, 448 U.S. 56 (1980), which conflated the
Confrontation Clause with hearsay law, many states
began to exempt crime laboratory reports from the
reach of the Sixth Amendment by labeling them as
"business records" or "public records." See Pamela R.
Metzger, Cheating the Constitution, 59 Vand. L. Rev.
475, 508 & n.165 (2006). Even in jurisdictions that
resisted characterizing crime laboratory reports as
business or public records, many legislatures enacted-and
courts condoned--laws specifically making