On retrial, Luis was acquitted.  You know Luis, don’t you?  His last name is Melendez-Diaz, as in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, requiring an actual living, breathing person to take the witness stand in order to put laboratory reports into evidence.  You know, confrontation and all.

I learned that Luis was acquitted from Brian Tannebaum, who made the point that Melendez-Diaz isn’t merely a case name, like Gideon or Miranda, but a person.  Sure, they live in perpetuity in hornbooks and briefs, but each was an actual person who was dragged into court one day with a whole lot on the line. 

After a glorious victory with the Supremes, Luis had to go back to court and face retrial.  We tend to forget about the people after the big story has been told.  After all, the Melendez-Diaz decision changes the landscape for those courts where papers proved the crime instead of people.  But for Luis, the celebration wasn’t quite complete.  He may have won the point, but he still had a trial to face.

And he was acquitted.  Not that he walked out of court afterward, as he is serving a ten year sentence for another drug case, but it beats a consecutive sentence any day. 

This small part of a big decision isn’t likely to be worthy of a lot of consideration.  After all, while every criminal defense lawyer knows about Ernesto Miranda, how many know what became of him?  After his big win at the Supremes and his statement suppressed, he was retried and convicted.  Some win, huh?

But in other news today, the Nassau County, New York, Crime Lab, previously  the only crime lab on probation in the country, has now had its drug chemistry lab shut down.  Closed.  Out of business.  The report is cursory, but nonetheless interesting.

New York officials have ordered the immediate shutdown of the drug chemistry section of the Nassau County crime lab.

District Attorney Kathleen Rice says the lab, which is currently under probation by a national accrediting agency, has produced a series of errors in its analysis of controlled substances. Nassau’s is currently the only crime lab in the country under probation.

Naturally, Rice then goes on to detail the heinous criminal behavior of the people she can’t prove to be guilty.  Gotta love Rice’s ability to make lemonade.  Without valid scientific evidence to prove that a substance is a controlled substance, Rice has nothing.  No case. No crime. No nothing.

Actually, she does have something.  There’s a piece of paper, a very official looking paper, that says it’s a laboratory report.  The very official looking piece of paper says that scientific tests were performed.  Maybe it even names the tests.  It most certainly provides an ironclad assurance that the substance in question is bad stuff, illegal, criminal.  It’s scientifically proven, the report says.

Except the lab “has produced a series of errors.”  It doesn’t say that anywhere on the report.

Notably, what happened in Nassau County, first the probation and then the closure, is unique.  Maybe it’s the worst in the nation.  Maybe it’s the only one where action has been taken to shut down a lab.  Maybe others are just as bad, or slightly less bad.  But if one crime lab was so bad that it had to be shut down, is it possible that others aren’t as perfect as the reports they issue would have us believe?

Lest we forget, the National Academies of Science  isn’t impressed with crime labs.  It’s report was damning.  Nothing has changed.  Nothing except that labs have to produce living, breathing witnesses in court so that they can’t just submit the official looking piece of paper that conclusively proves that a very scientific test was performed and the defendant is guilty as sin.

And Luis was acquitted.