Criminal Law Blog

The Appellate Division continued in relevant part: Having applied, as we must, the doctrinal holdings of Crawford and Davis to the hearsay statements before us, we now address the practical ramifications of these constitutional analyses. We do so with a full awareness...

Our case law reflects some ambivalence about whether the Confrontation Clause of the New Jersey Constitution, which has roots in our original state constitution of 1776, should be read more broadly than its federal counterpart. Compare State v. Daniels ("There is...

The three-judge panel continued in relevant part: Defendant also contends that he is independently entitled to cross-examine the authors of the laboratory reports and the blood sample certificate under the Confrontation Clause of the New Jersey Constitution, article...

The Appellate Division continued in relevant part: However, other courts following Crawford have reached different conclusions. For example, in State v. Caulfield, the Minnesota Supreme Court classified as testimonial a report from a state laboratory identifying a...

The Court continued in relevant part: The State argues that Crawford has no bearing on the admissibility of hospital worker's certificate because Gallant was not subjected to "police interrogation." See Davis. That argument is unpersuasive. For one thing, the Supreme...

The Appellate Division continued in relevant part: We recognize that hospital nurses, phlebotomists and other medical personnel are not police officers. Nonetheless, their close interaction with law enforcement officers, in extracting blood from DWI suspects and in...

The three-judge panel continued in relevant part: Likewise, we recently decided in State v. Renshaw, that a hospital nurse's blood sample certification under is testimonial under Crawford. In Renshaw, as here, a private hospital employee was asked by a police officer...

The Appellate Division continued in relevant part: In State v. Berezansky, we held that a defendant in a drunk-driving prosecution was similarly denied his constitutional guarantee of confrontation when a municipal judge admitted a State Police laboratory certificate...

The three-judge panel continued: We also note that the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation guarantee has been deemed applicable to state courts for several decades through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  See Pointer v. Texas (1961). For these reasons,...

The Appellate Division continued in relevant part: In another seminal opinion, decided in June 2006 after the matter now before us was tried, the United States Supreme Court clarified in Davis v. Washington that hearsay statements are "non-testimonial" when they are...