State v. March (216 S.W.3d 663, 2007)

Jan 01, 2005

OUTCOME: The case came back. The witness was still around and able to testify the second time. The defendant chose to plead guilty and took a much lighter sentence. He shaved ten years off his sentence so overall it was a good result.

I represented this client while I was a public defender only a couple of years out of law school. It was actually my first jury trial. The defendant was charged with trafficking drugs and was found g ... uilty at a jury trial. However, the State never called the actual lab technician that tested the alleged controlled substance as a witness at trial. I objected like crazy, citing Crawford v. Washington and the Confrontation Clause. The trial judge noted my objections and overruled them without much more thought. Luckily for the defendant the Missouri Supreme Court disagreed. This was my first jury trial and the initial case in Missouri to apply the Crawford/Confrontation analysis to a state's witness that tested evidence.