People v. Lopez
286 P.3d 469, 147 Cal.Rptr. 3d 559, 55 Cal. 4th 569 (2012)
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Rule of Law:
An out-of-court statement is testimonial under the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause only if it was made with some degree of formality and its primary purpose pertains to a criminal prosecution. Informal, uncertified notations on an internal laboratory log sheet lack the requisite formality to be considered testimonial.
Facts:
- On the evening of August 18, 2007, Virginia Hernandez Lopez was working at a restaurant in Julian, San Diego County.
- Bartenders served Lopez three single shots of tequila between 8:30 p.m. and 10:15 p.m.
- Shortly before 11:00 p.m., Lopez left in her sport utility vehicle (SUV).
- While driving on a narrow, curving road, Lopez's SUV collided with a pickup truck, killing the truck's driver, Allan Wolowsky.
- Lopez was seriously injured and admitted to an emergency medical technician that she had consumed 'a couple of drinks' and had been driving 'really fast.'
- At 1:04 a.m., approximately two hours after the accident, two vials of blood were drawn from Lopez at the hospital for testing.
Procedural Posture:
- Virginia Hernandez Lopez was charged with vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated in the San Diego County Superior Court, a state trial court.
- A jury found Lopez guilty as charged.
- Lopez appealed to the California Court of Appeal, which initially affirmed the trial court's judgment.
- The California Supreme Court granted Lopez's petition for review and transferred the case back to the Court of Appeal for reconsideration in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in 'Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts'.
- On reconsideration, the Court of Appeal (the intermediate appellate court) reversed the conviction, holding that Lopez's confrontation right was violated.
- The Attorney General, on behalf of the prosecution, petitioned the California Supreme Court for review.
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Issue:
Does the admission of a nontestifying analyst's laboratory report and a colleague's testimony about its contents violate a criminal defendant's Sixth Amendment right to confrontation when the report consists of machine-generated data and informal, uncertified notations?
Opinions:
Majority - Kennard, J.
No, the admission of the report and the colleague's testimony did not violate the defendant's right to confrontation. For an out-of-court statement to be testimonial, it must possess two critical components: a degree of formality or solemnity, and a primary purpose related to criminal prosecution. Here, the critical portions of the lab report lacked the necessary formality. The machine-generated data from the gas chromatograph are not 'statements' from a 'declarant' and thus do not implicate the Confrontation Clause. The handwritten notations on the log sheet linking Lopez's name to the sample number were informal records for internal lab use, not solemn, certified, or sworn declarations intended for trial, distinguishing them from the formalized certificates in 'Melendez-Diaz' and 'Bullcoming'.
Concurring - Werdegar, J.
Yes, I agree with the majority's conclusion that the report was not testimonial. I agree with the majority that the notation lacked sufficient formality to be testimonial, and I agree with Justice Corrigan that its primary purpose was administrative, not evidentiary. The Confrontation Clause requires a 'fair and practical boundary.' Routine, procedural notations like assigning an identification number do not carry the same risks of fabrication or bias as interrogations and are beyond this practical boundary. Requiring the testimony of every employee who makes such a routine notation would be impractical and offer little value, as they are unlikely to recall the specific event.
Concurring - Corrigan, J.
Yes, I agree with the majority's result, but I would base the analysis on the primary purpose test rather than formality. Most notations on the lab report, such as the lab number and dates, are conventional business records created for the 'administration of an entity's affairs,' not for the primary purpose of proving a fact at trial. Although the notation of the final blood-alcohol level might be testimonial, its admission was harmless because the non-testimonial, machine-generated data was properly admitted and explained by the testifying expert.
Dissenting - Liu, J.
Yes, the admission of the report and surrogate testimony violated the defendant's right to confrontation. The majority's reliance on the report's lack of formal bells and whistles is a mistake; the Supreme Court has never held that a lack of formality is dispositive. The proper focus is on the process and purpose. The report was generated through a highly regulated, government-driven process in a crime lab with the primary evidentiary purpose of establishing facts for a criminal prosecution. From the moment the sample was logged, the procedures were driven by its potential use in court, making the notations testimonial. The defendant was thus denied her right to confront the witnesses who created this evidence against her.
Analysis:
This decision refines California's application of the Confrontation Clause to forensic evidence in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's fractured 'Williams v. Illinois' ruling. The court establishes a significant distinction between formal, certified lab reports (which are testimonial) and informal, internal lab records (which may not be). By bifurcating the report into non-testimonial machine data and non-testimonial informal human notations, the court creates a pathway for prosecutors to admit forensic findings through a supervising expert without calling every analyst involved in the process. This holding narrows the scope of what constitutes 'testimonial' evidence in the forensic context, potentially easing the evidentiary burden on the prosecution in similar cases.
