Melendez-Diaz Coming to Mississippi?
This is admittedly speculative, but by appearances, the Mississippi Supreme Court may be grappling with how to live with hearsay in the post-Melendez-Diaz world.
Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, as U.S. Supreme Court watchers will recall, was last year's ruling that elaborated on the 2004 Crawford v. Washington decision and held that a criminal defendant enjoys a Sixth Amendment right to confront any analyst that prepares forensic reports introduced at trial.
Crawford popped up in the Mississippi Supreme Court's decision nearly a year ago in Birkhead v. State, but only briefly, and the opinion's reliance on a case overturned by Crawford seems inconsistent with the high court's rulings -- particularly as reiterated by Melendez-Diaz, which came out a few months after Birkhead.
Remarkably, the motion for rehearing on Birkhead has been pending before the Mississippi Supreme Court for a full 11 months now -- two months longer than the Court would have been afforded in the context of a direct appeal. Birkhead's attorneys advised the Court of the Melendez-Diaz decision in June, and no further activity has been detailed on the docket since.
The issue may now be before the Court in another case as well. By a vote of 8-1, the justices granted certiorari on Thursday in a case called Robinson v. State, in which the Mississippi Court of Appeals rebuffed a Sixth Amendment argument about three weeks before Melendez-Diaz hit the streets.
The Mississippi high court has yet to discuss Melendez-Diaz at length, but it may be getting ready to change that.
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