A convicted burglar's constitutional right to confront witnesses was not violated by a criminalist who testified at trial about DNA tests performed by other analysts, a Manhattan appeals court ruled on Tuesday.
The ruling in People v. Rodriguez, 5471/09, centered on whether defendant William Rodriguez's rights were violated when prosecutors introduced DNA-testing lab reports linking him to the crime. Melissa Huyck of the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner testified about the reports but was not among the analysts who performed, witnessed or supervised the testing.
A 3-2 panel of the Appellate Division, First Department, found that Rodriguez's Sixth Amendment rights were not stripped by his inability to confront the testing analysts themselves.
Huyck "conducted an independent review of the raw data derived from the testing of the DNA material derived from both the physical evidence and from defendant's person, and was not merely 'functioning as a conduit for the conclusions of others,'" said Justice Marcy Kahn, quoting People v. John, a 2016 Court of Appeals decision that was dissected by the split panel.
Rodriguez was convicted by a jury of second-degree burglary in 2014 and sentenced by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Richard Carruthers to 20 years to life in prison as a persistent violent felony offender.
Rodriguez previously had pleaded guilty to multiple counts of first-degree burglary, first-degree robbery, second-degree robbery, second-degree kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child. Carruthers sentenced him to a concurrent aggregate term of 25 years to life.
The confrontation clause portion of Rodriguez's appeal applied only to the second-degree burglary conviction, which he asked to vacate.
Kahn, joined by Justices Peter Tom and Barbara Kapnick, said Rodriguez's confrontation claim was unpreserved and "we decline to review it in the interest of justice." But they also said that "as an alternative holding, we reject it," and added that "we find that an extended discussion of the merits is warranted."
In the majority's view, the defense's cross-examination of Huyck satisfied Rodriguez's confrontation clause rights.
Moreover, Kahn said dissenting Justices Rolando Acosta and Ellen Gesmer's took an "impracticable and unwieldy" view, that did not comport with John, by contending that defendants such as Rodriguez should be able to examine a DNA "analyst who actually did the testing."
This "would impose further restrictions on such evidence far beyond those contemplated by ... John, requiring the testimony of any laboratory analyst anywhere in the country who had at any time developed and transmitted a DNA profile to CODIS [Combined DNA Index System] for matching purposes," Kahn wrote.