Pesky Sixth Amendment to Make Drug Convictions More Annoying for Mass. Prosecutors

The Bill of Rights.

At issue in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts was a Massachusetts law that allowed forensics experts to skip testifying about their laboratory analysis of alleged drug samples. The law allowed prosecutors to admit notarized certificates from the forensics experts that described the nature and quantity of the alleged drugs because science is infallible and scientists in the constant employ of the state would never falsify evidence.

It's a handy law to have if you try tens of thousands of drug cases a year, as Massachusetts does. Unfortunately, as the Supreme Court ruled, it's also a grave violation of our Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses at criminal trial.

The Court ruled that drug defendants have a right to cross-examine forensics experts at trial, and the ruling might jeopardize thousands of drug convictions that were made on the basis of the pretend-evidence affidavits. And Massachusetts prosecutors are furious that they will have to produce all of these forensics experts at trials, a burden that they say will keep the experts from their work in the laboratory. God forbid anything slow the steamroller of drugs convictions from disrupting the lives of thousands of petty dealers and addicts.

Of course, Massachusetts's next U.S. Senator might see what she can do for the Commonwealth by getting rid of that pesky Sixth Amendment. She should get some support from states like Arizona and Texas, at any rate.