The opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, has prosecutors and judges shaking their heads in disgust and defense lawyers nodding with satisfaction at the notion that the Constitution's Sixth Amendment guarantee that defendants "shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him" is not satisfied by a sheet of paper. [More]But if rights are collective, didn't, by "witnesses," the Founders mean "the government" instead of a specific individual?
Hey, I wonder if this ruling could be applied to ferret out snitches...?
[Via Len Savage]
10 comments:
Sure a lot of whining about how hard this will make it to put some people in prison. My thought on it is: if it is not worth the (very small) effort of complying with the 6th amendment, then "they" shouldn't be interfering with peoples lives. If "they" restricted themselves to cases where genuine crimes have been committed I think the burden is easily met. Cue up a lot of whining about drug use going "unpunished".
"In drug cases, more than 1.5 million samples are analyzed by state and local labs each year, resulting in more than 350,000 felony convictions, national statistics show. "Even if only 5 percent of drug cases culminate in trials, the burden on the states is oppressive," a group of state attorneys general wrote in a brief for the case."
1. Perhaps the numbers are telling you something, misters AG.
2. The burden on the state is oppressive?
The whole POINT of the Constitution and the BOR is that it is SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFICULT for der stat to infringe on our liberties.
If the f'ers don't like it, they can move to China or North Korea. No shortage of "criminals" to prosecute there, and few of those "pesky" rules to follow.
Assholes!
How is anyone supposed to cross-examine a piece of paper? How can a jury assess the credibility of a piece of paper - what, its going to move its eyes in a bunch of different directions when it lies to you? THAT is why you are supposed to be able to confront witnesses - to test their credibility, their memory, their grasp of the facts, to find out where there are holes in their stories, to see if they are reaching conclusions instead of simply reporting what they saw, heard, smelled or physically felt.
Yeah, but that might inconvenience the statist bastards - I know, let's toss the 6th Amendment. Better yet, let's just toss out the entire BOR, it'll make prosecuting people SOOOOO much easier.
Every year it becomes more and more obvious why we have the 2nd Amendment.
This ought to make the red light/speed camera cases much more interesting.
Any chance that this ruling could help Olofsen?
Better late than never. It's way past time for such a ruling. One of the most evil uses of "scientific evidence" is the sobriquet of "the sample is consistent with blah, blah, etc."
A defense attorney cannot question a sheet of paper to find out if "consistent with" means "identical to", which of course, it doesn't. The defense cannot ask the sheet of paper just how ubiquitous are substances that are "consistent with" and how readily available are those substances and/or items? In many cases, if direct testimony could have been elicited it is likely that jurors would have items or substances "consistent with", though they had committed no crime. But, the defense cannot open that line of questioning to a sheet of paper.
As someone above said, if direct testimony is not important enough to do, then neither is the trial.
David,
You have really hit on an important subject.
PLEASE go to your nearest bookstore and get the latest issue of ...
POPULAR MECHANICS
The cover article is ...
The truth about Forensics. It is quite an eye-opener. Oh, and the cover has a gun!
Here is the Popular Mechanics cover.
Take-away quote:
"Forensic Science was not developed by scientists. It was created by cops -- often with little more than common sense."
Thanks for the tip on that magazine.
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