In Smith v. Arizona, No. 22-889 (June 21, 2024), a unanimous Court held, when an expert conveys an absent analyst’s statements in support of the expert’s opinion, and the statements provide that support only if true, then the statements come into evidence for their truth, implicating the Sixth Amendments Confrontation Clause.
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the court, in which Justices Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson joined, and in which Justices Thomas and Gorsuch joined as to Parts I, II, and IV. Justices Thomas and Gorsuch filed opinions concurring in part. Justice Alito filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which Chief Justice Roberts joined.
Petitioner Smith’s case presents the same question on which the Court fractured in Williams. Arizona law enforcement officers found petitioner Jason Smith with a large quantity of what appeared to be drugs and drug related items. Smith was charged with various drug offenses, and the State sent the seized items to a crime lab for scientific analysis. Analyst Elizabeth Rast ran forensic tests on the items and concluded that they contained usable quantities of methamphetamine, marijuana, and cannabis. Rast prepared a set of typed notes and a signed report about the testing. The State originally planned for Rast to testify about those matters at Smith’s trial, but Rast stopped working at the lab prior to trial. So the State substituted another analyst, Greggory Longoni, to “provide an independent opinion on the drug testing performed by Elizabeth Rast.” At trial, Longoni conveyed to the jury what Rast’s records revealed about her testing, before offering his “independent opinion” of each item’s identity. Smith was convicted. On appeal, he argued that the State’s use of a substitute expert to convey the substance of Rast’s materials violated his Confrontation Clause rights. The Arizona Court of Appeals rejected Smith’s challenge, holding that Longoni could constitutionally present his own expert opinions based on his review of Rast’s work because her statements were then used only to show the basis of his opinion and not to prove their truth.
Justice Kagan explained that "Arizona does not escape the Confrontation Clause just because Rast’s records came in to explain the basis of Longoni’s opinion:"
Our holding today follows from all this Court has held about the Confrontation Clause’s application to forensic evidence. A State may not introduce the testimonial out-of court statements of a forensic analyst at trial, unless she is unavailable and the defendant has had a prior chance to cross-examine her. See Crawford, 541 U. S., at 68; Melendez-Diaz, 557 U. S., at 311. Neither may the State introduce those statements through a surrogate analyst who did not participate in their creation. See Bullcoming, 564 U. S., at 663. And nothing changes if the surrogate—as in this case—presents the out-of-court statements as the basis for his expert opinion. Those statements, as we have explained, come into evidence for their truth—because only if true can they provide a reason to credit the substitute expert. So a defendant has the right to cross-examine the person who made them.