A lawyer accused of smuggling medicine right into a Bay State jail will see her conviction overturned, the Supreme Judicial Court docket dominated Wednesday.
Former legal professional Elana Gordon was discovered responsible of delivering a category B managed substance, Suboxone, to a prisoner and sentenced to 6 months in October 2021.
Following years of appeals, the Supreme Judicial Court docket has now unanimously ordered her conviction overturned and remanded for a brand new trial.
Gordon allegedly introduced two envelopes with 61 strips of Suboxone to an inmate on the Plymouth County Correctional Facility — which have been then confiscated by officers and despatched to a criminal offense lab to be examined by a forensic analyst.
In the course of the trial nonetheless, the analyst was “no longer with the lab,” and the prosecution referred to as a “substitute chemist” from the identical facility to testify utilizing the analyst’s notes and findings.
Gordon’s protection at trial unsuccessfully objected to the testimony from the substitute witness, on the grounds of her “right to confrontation” together with her accuser, and he or she later appealed on the identical grounds.
The Appeals Court docket affirmed the conviction, however a brand new ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court docket in October 2024 kicked the case again to the Massachusetts SJC.
In June 2024, the Supreme Court docket determined Smith v. Arizona — a case revolving round 5 drug-related offenses during which the lab technician who examined the substances didn’t testify — adjusting the correct of confrontation in its utility to forensic consultants testifying.
“The right of a defendant in a criminal trial to be confronted with the witnesses against him or her, which is enshrined in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, limits the prosecution’s ability to introduce statements made by persons not in the court room,” SJC Affiliate Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt wrote within the Gordon choice.
Below the Supreme Court docket’s new ruling in Smith, utilizing a substitute professional to current the unique technician’s findings on this approach “no longer comports with the right of confrontation, and the admission of such expert opinion testimony is an error of constitutional dimension,” the affiliate justice mentioned.
“Unless we are satisfied that the ‘erroneously admitted [evidence] had little or no effect on the verdicts,’ ‘[a] violation of the right to confrontation requires a new trial,’ ” Wendlandt wrote.
The substitute professional was a “key witness for the prosecution,” Wendlandt mentioned, who “alone testified that the strips that the defendant passed to the inmate contained a controlled substance.”
The choice additionally acknowledged different proof in the course of the trial, together with information of two calls the day earlier than the jail alternate between Gordon, an inmate and his sister. In the course of the calls, the inmate requested Gordon give one other prisoner “the paperwork,” who would then give it to him.
In the course of the trial, Gordon’s protection maintained that she was not conscious of the presence of any medicine within the envelopes.
In conditions just like the Gordon case with out the unique analyst current, Wendlandt’s choice acknowledged disadvantages “because he or she cannot cross-examine the testing analyst regarding the analyst’s actual compliance with laboratory protocols, any mishandling or mislabeling of the substance tested, or outright manipulation and fraud.”
The court docket justices unanimously affirmed the choice, with a concurring opinion from Affiliate Justice Serge Georges.
Georges wrote that the “reading of Smith goes too far.”
“An expert who independently reviews raw, machine-generated data and testifies to her own conclusions — based on her training and experience — does not violate the confrontation clause,” Georges argued.
Nevertheless, the justice cited points with the usual of harmlessness within the Commonwealth’s case, including, “I therefore respectfully concur in the judgment.”
