The Supreme Court returns to the crime lab, and leaves a mess

Q:'Was there a computer match generated of the male DNA profile found in semen from the vaginal swabs of [L.J.] to a male DNA profile that had been identified as having originated from Sandy Williams?

Lambatos:'Yes, there was.

On February 10, 2000, in Chicago, a young woman, L.J., was abducted while she was walking home from work, forced into a car, raped and robbed. L.J. went to the hospital for treatment and the police conducted a rape exam taking the necessary samples. The Illinois State Police sent samples to Cellmark Diagnostics Laboratory in Germantown, Maryland, for DNA testing, which matched the DNA with a male profile it had. Sandra Lambatos, a forensic specialist at the ISP lab, was then able to match that profile to Sandy Williams in the Illinois state DNA database, based on a sample of his blood taken after an arrest on unrelated charges on August 3, 2000.

L.J. was subsequently able to identify Williams at a police lineup, and in 2006 Williams was convicted of all charges in a bench (i.e., non-jury) trial. As part of the trial, however, Lambatos had testified as to how she used the Cellmark report to make her identification, but didn't introduce Cellmark's report itself as evidence, nor was anyone from Cellmark called to testify. Williams' attorney objected to this, saying it violated his client's rights under the Confrontation Clause to not be able to cross-examine anyone from Cellmark as to how they handled the evidence and did the match.

In a 5-4 decision today, the Court upheld Williams' conviction, and it's not your typical 5-4 lineup:

Alito, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Kennedy and Breyer, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed a concurring opinion. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Kagan, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined.

And what happens with such a mishmosh? Basically, Justice Thomas' "unique" separate holding means uncertainty for lower courts, prosecutors and defense counsel. As Justice Kagan puts it in dissent:

First, [the other five Justices] have approved the introduction of testimony at Williams's trial that the Confrontation Clause, rightly understood, clearly prohibits. Second, they have left significant confusion in their wake. What comes out of four Justices' desire to limit Melendez-Diaz and Bullcoming in whatever way possible, combined with one Justice's one-justice view of those holdings, is'to be frank'who knows what. Those decisions apparently no longer mean all that they say. Yet no one can tell in what way or to what extent they are altered because no proposed limitation commands the support of a majority

Below the orange gnocchi, I'll explain. (Warning: A geegaw is involved.)