Eleventh Circuit: Autopsy Reports Are Testimonial Evidence, Subject to Confrontation Clause

In United States v. Ignasiak, the Eleventh Circuit reversed the defendant’s convictions for health care fraud and unlawful dispensing of controlled substances, holding that the district court violated the Confrontation Clause by admitting autopsy reports into evidence without requiring in-court testimony by the medical examiners who performed the autopsies.

In this case, a jury convicted Dr. Robert Ignasiak of health care fraud and dispensing controlled substances in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1347 and 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1)-(2), respectively. As evidence of fraud and improperly prescribing medications, the Government called two medical examiners to testify about autopsies they had performed, allegedly as a result of Dr. Ignasiak’s practices. During this testimony, the Government admitted (over the defendant’s objections) charts and autopsy reports of other patients whom the testifying doctors did not examine and questioned the doctors about those reports.

On appeal, the defendant argued that the admission of these reports/charts into evidence with no indication as to the availability of the doctors who actually performed the autopsies and authored the reports violated the Confrontation Clause and the rules of evidence. The Eleventh Circuit agreed.

The court of appeals, citing Crawford v. Washington, held that autopsy reports are testimonial evidence and, therefore, subject to the Confrontation Clause. The court also noted that there was no evidence that the individuals who performed the exams and authored the reports were unavailable or that the defendant had an opportunity to cross examine them. The defendant’s convictions were reversed and the case was remanded.

DNA Evidence and the Confrontation Clause

By the_tjb

Williams v. Illinois, was recently argued before the Supreme Court. This case concerns the issue of when a DNA analyst testifies at trial that he or she has compared analyses of two DNA samples and found a match-- does the prosecution also have to produce the experts who produced the analyses, or only the expert who reviewed them both and made the match? The oral arguments to Williams v. Illinois, can be heard through this link.

According to an article in The Atlantic, interest in this case is from a recent appeal by an Illinois rape convict and is part of a recent series of cases testing the reach of a defendant’s right to be “confronted by the witnesses against him.” A narrow majority of the Supreme Court has expanded that Sixth Amendment right in cases involving a range of witness testimony, including the introduction of forensic reports.

The facts of the case are as follows: Police took a sample of Sandy Williams’s blood after he was arrested on an unrelated charge. A lab technician at the official state lab then sequenced his DNA. A state expert in turn compared the chart produced by that sequencing with another chart, drawn from a sample taken in a “rape kit” from the victim. That chart came from a sequencing conducted in an out-of-state lab. The state-lab tech testified that proper procedures were followed. The expert testified that the two charts were a close match. The out-of-state lab was accredited, but beyond that little was introduced regarding the procedures that took place on their end. Williams’s attorneys moved to strike the evidence and thus far the Illinois state court has refused.

The case has potentially important implications for both sides of the criminal law practice. Requiring testimony from multiple experts who will essentially be testifying to the same thing, makes criminal prosecution more costly. However, allowing only one expert to testify raises the chance that flawed DNA may sway the jury.

The new dispute, closely watched by prosecutors and defense lawyers nationwide, specifically addresses situations in which a report is not introduced at trial but is used as the basis for testimony by another expert witness. A ruling would refine the rules for when analysts must be available for trial.

Forty-two other states have entered the case on the side of Illinois, arguing that scientific witnesses should be able to offer independent analyses of forensic evidence without the need to bring in the people who generated the underlying data. Defense groups such as the California Public Defenders Association counter that if those who prepared the underlying reports are not called, a defendant will not be able to probe their qualifications or record.

The issue is critical in criminal prosecutions because of the important role DNA evidence has developed since it was first introduced as evidence in the 1990's. It’s seen by many juries as rock-solid proof that a crime was or was not committed, even if that conclusion is misleading in the context of the entire case. Justice Alito wrote as much in an earlier case, saying “DNA testing... even when performed in perfect accordance with protocols - often fails to provide ‘absolute proof’ of anything.”

A ruling in the case of Williams v. Illinois is likely by the end of June when the Court recesses for the summer.

See Our Related Blog Posts:

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Health Care Battle Brings Calls for Recusal

U.S. Supreme Court to Revisit the Confrontation Clause... Again

Staircase at US Supreme Court  by RLHyde

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the potentially monumental case of Williams v. Illinois yesterday. The case involves a laboratory test in a rape case. A sample of Williams' DNA was sent to a lab in Maryland where it was tested. The result proved that Williams' DNA matched the DNA of a rape assailant. At his trial, an analyst with the Illinois State Police Laboratory testified about the DNA and how the DNA taken from the assailant in the rape case matched the DNA taken from Williams. The analyst admitted that the DNA sample was tested in a Maryland laboratory and that she never touched it, but that she did an independent review of the findings in her preparation as an expert witness. Williams was convicted and appealed. The Illinois Court of Appeals affirmed stating that the analyst was testifying as an expert and that the Maryland test results were never entered into evidence. Since there was an opportunity for cross-examination of the analyst, the Court saw no error in the proceedings.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to revisit the Confrontation Clause as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. The Confrontation Clause provides a Defendant with the right to confront their accusers; particularly the right to cross-examine them at trial. The big issue for Williams is whether it is a violation of the Confrontation Clause that the actual technician who tested the DNA sample was not at trial and could not be cross-examined.

This is not a new issue before the Supreme Court. In fact, there have been two very recent opinions regarding issues of the Confrontation Clause: Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts and Bullcoming v. New Mexico. Melendez-Diaz stood for the principle that laboratory results are "testimonial" and that the defendant's Sixth Amendment rights were violated because the technician who handled the lab results had not testified. Bullcoming involved the same issue, but the lab technician who ran and handled the tests for a blood alcohol sample was on unpaid leave at the time of the trial. The testimony came from another analyst who was familiar with the testing process but did not touch the actual sample. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that this was a violation of the Confrontation Clause.

The dissenters in both Bullcoming and Melendez-Diaz stated fears that due to the majorities' holding, guilty criminals would go free because a lab technician couldn't be at trial. They also worried about the effect the holdings would have on the demand for technicians in court. The already long waiting period for lab results will undoubtedly increase if all the technicians are under Court-ordered Subpoena. The question for the dissenters becomes, what happens when a lab technician is permanently unavailable? Does that then mean that the lab result will never be admitted at trial?

Many are hoping these questions will be answered in Williams v. Illinois. Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and law professor at the University of California Irvine School of Law, wrote an article on Williams for the ABA Journal. He stated that if the Court were to affirm Williams' conviction, experts can then testify based on a laboratory report without it actually being entered into evidence. If the Court chooses to reverse the Illinois courts, he says, then prosecutors will not know what to do in cases where a technician is unavailable or in a case such as this, where there are multiple steps and multiple technicians involved in the process.

Chemerinsky provides a little perspective regarding this issue when he says, "the underlying basic question is: how much should practical consequences matter in interpreting a provision like the Confrontation Clause?"

It will certainly be an interesting case to watch. We'll keep you updated on its progress throughout the upcoming Supreme Court season.

Sixth Circuit Finds No Error In Knoxville Accessory to Carjacking Case

• US. v. ERIC DEWAYNE BOYD

In this Sixth Circuit case from the Eastern District of Tennessee,  Eric Boyd appeals his jury conviction of being an accessory after the fact to a carjacking and misprision of a carjacking. (Misprision of a felony occurs when a person, “having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to a judge or other authority.) 


This case relates to Boyd's part in the help he rendered to Lamaricus Davidson. Davidson was one of the principal defendants convicted in the brutal rape and murder in Knoxville of Christopher Newsom and his girlfriend, Channon Christian. Boyd was not charged with actually committing the crime of carjacking which resulted in the death and serious bodily injury to another person.  Instead, he was charged with helping someone else try to avoid being arrested, prosecuted or punished for that crime.


Statements made between Davidson and Boyd were introduced at Boyd's trial and are among the things he chiefly complains about on appeal. Prior to his trial, Boyd moved to exclude the portions of his videotaped interview in which he discussed the things Davidson told him about the carjacking, rapes, and murders.  Boyd argued that Davidson’s statements were inadmissible hearsay and violated the Confrontation Clause. Boyd’s recounting of Davidson’s statements presents a double hearsay issue, because it constitutes a statement within a statement.  There is no dispute that Boyd’s statements to police were admissible under the admission by a party-opponent exception. The issue is Davidson's statements.


The Sixth Circuit held that Davidson’s statements to Boyd were properly admitted as non-hearsay offered to prove Boyd’s knowledge of the carjacking and murders.  Both charges against Boyd required the Government to prove that he had knowledge of a crime.  And the Court found that as his state of mind is an element of the offense, this evidence is relevant.

Boyd also argues that the admission of Davidson’s statements violated the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause because he had no opportunity to confront the witness Davidson. Here, the Court held that the statements are  non-testimonial.  Davidson made the statements to a companion, and a reasonable person in Davidson’s position would not have anticipated the use of the statements in a criminal proceeding like a trial. Lastly, the statements do not trigger the Confrontation Clause because they were offered as non-hearsay.  Sixth Circuit affirms his convictions of 180 months accessory after the fact to a carjacking and 36 months for misprision of a carjacking .