Campbell v. North Dakota

Amicus brief of Law Professors Paul C. Gianelli, Pamela Metzger, and Andrew E. Taslitz, NACDL, the Innocence Project and the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Cert. denied, January 22, 2007.

Documents

Campbell v. North Dakota

United States Supreme Court; Case No. 06-664

Prior Decision

Lower court opinion: 719 N.W.2d 374 (N.D. 2006).

Question Presented

Whether the prosecution can prove the forensic part of its case by affidavit -- by introducing crime lab reports without putting the author on the stand -- so long as the defense is given the opportunity to call the lab analyst to the stand as a defense witness. Requiring the defense to bear the burden of presenting evidence regarding a central component of the prosecution’s case, evidence that is created by a paid agent of the government for trial, is antithetical to our adversarial system of criminal justice.

Argument(s)

 

Author(s)

Timothy O’Toole, et al., D.C. Public Defender Service, Washington, D.C.