In a hefty 81-page opinion published today, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that “substitute” experts cannot testify to the findings of another expert. Such testimony violates the confrontation clause of the 6th Amendment.
In the case at hand, prosecutors presented a “substitute” expert who testified at trial that a substance allegedly in the defendant’s possession was suboxone. The “substitute” expert did not, however, actually test the substance. The testing was done by another expert at the state’s crime lab.
Such testimony violated the 6th Amendment, according to the SJC:
We conclude that… where a substitute expert’s opinion is dependent upon the truth of a nontestifying analyst’s testimonial hearsay, the confrontation clause bars admission of the opinion even if the substitute expert is familiar with the testing analyst’s laboratory protocols and reviewed the analyst’s case file; an expert’s opinion based on an absent analyst’s test results that depends also on the truth of the analyst’s testimonial hearsay as to the processes and protocols she said she followed to obtain those results is precluded by the confrontation clause. Such expert opinion testimony…is prohibited because the relevant witness against the accused, in a constitutional sense, is the absent analyst.
The full text of the opinion is attached below.