LABORATORY REPORTS
The laboratory report is the public face of forensic science. All of the evidence analysis, interpretation, and conclusions that take place in a forensic science laboratory culminate in a laboratory report. The report goes directly to the official who submit ted the evidence to the laboratory for analysis. In public forensic science laboratories, the submitting official is the police officer or criminal investigator who is investigating the crime. In addition, a copy of the report goes to the prosecuting attorney who is responsible for the case. Depending upon the jurisdiction, the report will also go automatically to the defense attorney or will be furnished upon request. Once the laboratory report has been submitted, it can be used by the prosecutor to help deter mine what charges, if any, will be filed against the suspect. It can also be used by the defense attorney to help advise the accused of what charges are being filed and to help estimate the strength of the government’s case. If the case goes to trial, then the report may be used as evidence under certain conditions. In 2009, the United States Supreme Court, in the Melendez Diaz v. Massachusetts case ruled that the submission of a forensic science laboratory report into evidence without the testimony of the scientist who performed the tests on the evidence, was a violation of the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation. The Court did allow the continual practice of “notice-and-demand,” whereby the prosecutor would put the defendant on notice of the intention to submit the report without the scientist’s testimony and also giving the defendant time to file an objection. In 2011, the Supreme Court extended the provisions of the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment, by forbidding a supervisor of the scientist who performed testing to testify on behalf of the scientist. These two cases, along with previous ones, mean that, in most cases, a scientist must testify on the contents of a laboratory report, except under defined circumstances. Most states have a “notice-and-demand” rule and thus, many laboratory reports are still admitted as evidence without the scientist’s testimony. One of the major issues concerning forensic science laboratory reports is what they should like and how complete they should be. The National Academy of Sciences Forensic Science Committee, in its 2009 report, indicated that model laboratory formats should be created and the information given in the reports should be specified. Current practice in many scientific laboratories is to issue brief laboratory reports that are little more than “Certificates of Analysis,” and indeed, some are titled that way. Figure 1 is an example of a Certificate of Analysis type report. If forensic science is truly science and its laboratory reports are the public face of forensic science, then it stands to reason that these reports should be outstanding examples of scientific reports. They should be complete with all data, results, conclusions, limitations, and reasoning. In 2012, one of the authors of this book embarked upon a research project that would gather data from which recommendations could be made concerning the proper content of a scientific forensic science laboratory report. To that end, 421 redacted forensic science reports were obtained from more than 40 laboratories. These were subjected to content analysis to determine what information they contained. This was measured against recommendations made by some 30 orga nizations inside and outside forensic science as to what laboratory reports should look like. The results indicated that many reports were brief certificates of analysis that lacked detailed methods and procedures, results and conclusions, and the reasoning behind the conclusions, the data that were gathered and relied upon to establish the conclusions and the limitations (e.g., error rates) of the methods used. Although the reactions of many in forensic science to the call for more scientific reports implied in this research, were generally positive, several issues were raised. First, complete scientific reports are long, scientific, and may be complicated. Since prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and juries are not sophisticated in the sci ences, they would not understand the reports. The response to this concern could be to put an “executive summary” at the beginning of the report that sets out the main conclusions. This is the information that the attorneys indicated that they need from the report and thus, they could find it easily. Another concern is that many types of analysis rely on standard operating pro cedures and thus, laboratory reports would be repetitive and unduly consumptive of time. There is nothing wrong with using “boilerplate” in reports if the procedures and results are the same from report to report. This information could also be put on a website for access by those with a need to know. Finally, the concern was raised that the laboratory report would be exceedingly long if all of the data and accompanying charts, graphs, spectra, chromatographs, databases, etc., were included in the report. In cases where the defendant hires a defense expert to review the scientific evidence, that expert will want to see all of the data that were gathered during the analysis and that were relied upon in crafting the report. Currently, this information can only be obtained by the use of discovery or by voluntary cooperation by the laboratory. In many cases, discovery is laborious and time-consuming and voluntary cooperation of some laboratories is found wanting. It would be scientifically proper and responsible for all of the data to be in the report or easily obtained either in printed form or on a protected website. It remains to be seen if a consensus scientific laboratory report format arises from the forensic science system. Doubtless it would improve the delivery of forensic science services and the outside image of forensic science as a scientific discipline.
FIGURE 1 Telephone: Fax: An example of a “certificate of analysis” type of laboratory report. Although this type of report is easily understood by judges and attorneys, it is not a scientific laboratory report because it lacks methods, detailed procedures, data, the underlying reasoning that lead to the conclusions, and the limitations of the analysis.
