The Supreme Court overturned the conviction of an attorney found guilty of smuggling illegal drugs into a Massachusetts state prison after the state supported her appeal.
The petitioner, lawyer Elana Gordon, argued that the prosecution’s use of a scientific expert at trial who had not personally analyzed the drugs violated her constitutional right to confront an accuser. The state here agreed with Gordon that the case should be returned to a lower court for a second look.
The case now returns to the Appeals Court of Massachusetts, which may order a retrial or take other action.
The Supreme Court granted Gordon’s petition in a brief unsigned order on Oct. 21. The court did not explain its decision. No justices dissented.
The nation’s highest court vacated the ruling of the Massachusetts court and directed it to reconsider its ruling “in light of Smith v. Arizona.”
The Supreme Court ruled on June 21 in that prior case that prosecutors infringed on an Arizona defendant’s constitutional right to confront witnesses against him by using the testimony of a substitute expert witness who had not conducted the drug tests performed by another expert.
The state charged Gordon with smuggling the synthetic opioid buprenorphine, a controlled substance in Massachusetts, into the Plymouth House of Correction on May 4, 2018, while on a visit with a prospective client, according to the petition she filed with the Supreme Court on April 2 of this year.
A grand jury handed up indictments against Gordon for conspiracy, possession of a Class B controlled substance, and smuggling a Class B substance into a house of correction. The seized substances were sent to the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory for analysis.
The substances were given to crime lab chemist Kimberly Dunlap for analysis.
After the conspiracy charge was withdrawn, Gordon went on trial in October 2021 on the possession and smuggling charges but by that time Dunlap “had left the [Massachusetts State Police] crime lab for reasons that are not clear from the record,” according to the petition.
In her place, crime lab analyst Carrie Labelle testified on the composition of the substances even though she “performed no laboratory work analyzing the samples provided.”
Based on Dunlap’s notes, Labelle said at the trial that Dunlap carried out an analysis of the substances that confirmed one of the substances was buprenorphine.
Labelle acknowledged she could have ordered that the substances be retested but said she declined to do so because she found no “discrepancies” when reviewing Dunlap’s work.
Plymouth Superior Court Judge Thomas McGuire sentenced Gordon to six months of imprisonment.
Gordon appealed her conviction on multiple grounds, including that her rights were violated under the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause, which guarantees an accused person the right to question those providing evidence against her.
The Appeals Court ruled against Gordon, determining that the substitute drug analyst conducted herself properly in describing the analytic process and forming her own independent opinion of the nature of the substances tested.
“We discern no error or violation of the defendant’s confrontation rights,” the court said in a ruling on Nov. 8, 2023.
Massachusetts agreed with Gordon that the Supreme Court should take up the case.
“Because certain portions of the substitute analyst’s testimony should be analyzed under this Court’s holding in Smith, the [Appeals Court’s] decision rejecting the petitioner’s Confrontation Clause claim must be vacated,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said in an Aug. 8 brief.
“Therefore, the Commonwealth asks this Court to grant the petition, vacate the decision below, and remand to the [Appeals Court].”
The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office in Boston declined to comment on the ruling.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Gordon’s attorney, Christopher L. DeMayo of Melrose, Massachusetts, but did not receive a reply by publication time.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Oct. 25, 2024, in The Epoch Times.