Articles Tagged with briscoe

Here is Professor Friedman’s post about Briscoe.

The Virginia Supreme Court today issued its decision in Briscoe on remand from the United States Supreme Court.  . The court held that the former Virginia statutory scheme (under which the defendant had to call a lab analyst as his witness if he wanted to examine the analyst) was unconstitutional. This, of course, was the point that I sought to establish in bringing the petition for certiorari; Melendez-Diaz made the point clear, and now the Virginia Supreme Court has drawn the obvious conclusion.
The court held that the error was harmless in Briscoe’s case, but Cypress’s conviction was reversed. I expect his case will plead out.

Here are the SCOTUSWiki links on the Supreme Court litigation.

Here is a link to the full cert petition in Pendergrass v. Indiana.  The question presented is:

Whether the Confrontation Clause permits the prosecution to introduce testimonial statements of a nontestifying forensic analyst through the in-court testimony of a supervisor or other person who did not perform or observe the laboratory analysis described in the statements.

Pendergrass v. State, 913 N.E.2d 703 (Ind. 2009).

Well, that may be anti-climatic?  I think the Supremes punted.  Here’s a link to the Briscoe memorandum opinion, more later.

PER CURIAM. We vacate the judgment of the Supreme Court of Vir-ginia and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with the opinion in Melendez-Diaz v. Massa-chusetts, 557 U. S. ___ (2009).

Here is a link to today’s oral argument in Briscoe v. Virginia, the post Crawford and Melendez-Diaz case.

While I’m not convinced the decision will have much meaning in military cases, there are others who believe it will.  So it does behoove us to monitor the case.

Briscoe v. Virginia, a post Crawford and Melendez-Diaz case is scheduled to be argued at the U. S. Supreme Court on 11 January 2010.  Professor Friedman will argue for petitioner Briscoe.

Professor Friedman notes that, “I have just served and filed the reply in Briscoe. You can read it by clicking here.”

All of the prior documents about this case can be found at SCOTUSWiki.  This case is of importance to military justice practitioners.  There are several cases pending within military appellate courts that might be affected by Briscoe, as well as some cases pending at court-martial.  Some of my prior comments are here.

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