Page 80 - Texas police Association Peace Officer Guide 2017

And in determining whether a statement is testimonial, “standard rules of hearsay, designed to
identify some statements as reliable, will be relevant.” In the end, the question is whether, in
light of all the circumstances, viewed objectively, the “primary purpose” of the conversation was
to “creat[e] an out-of-court substitute for trial testimony.”

Thus, under our precedents, a statement cannot fall within the Confrontation Clause unless its
primary purpose was testimonial. “Where no such primary purpose exists, the admissibility of a
statement is the concern of state and federal rules of evidence, not the Confrontation Clause.”

In this case, we consider statements made to preschool teachers, not the police. Because at least
some statements to individuals who are not law enforcement officers could conceivably raise
confrontation concerns, we decline to adopt a categorical rule excluding them from the Sixth
Amendment’s reach. Nevertheless, such statements are much less likely to be testimonial than
statements to law enforcement officers. And considering all the relevant circumstances here, L.
P.’s statements clearly were not made with the primary purpose of creating evidence for Clark’s
prosecution. Thus, their introduction at trial did not violate the Confrontation Clause.

There is no indication that the primary purpose of the conversation was to gather evidence for
Clark’s prosecution. On the contrary, it is clear that the first objective was to protect L. P. At no
point did the teachers inform L. P. that his answers would be used to arrest or punish his abuser.
L. P. never hinted that he intended his statements to be used by the police or prosecutors. And
the conversation between L. P. and his teachers was informal and spontaneous. The teachers
asked L. P. about his injuries immediately upon discovering them, in the informal setting of a
preschool lunchroom and classroom, and they did so precisely as any concerned citizen would
talk to a child who might be the victim of abuse. This was nothing like the formalized station-
house questioning in Crawford or the police interrogation and battery affidavit in Hammon .

th
Ohio v. Clark, No. 13-1352, U.S. Sup. Ct., June 18 , 2015.
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EVIDENCE – DNA TEST RESULTS – CONFRONTATION CLAUSE

Does the admission of a supervising DNA analyst’s opinion regarding a DNA match violate the
Confrontation Clause when that opinion is based upon computer-generated data obtained through
batch DNA testing? Neither this Court nor the United States Supreme Court has squarely
answered this question. In this case, we hold that it does not. Consequently, we affirm the court
of appeals’ holding that the admission of the supervising analyst’s testimony did not violate the
Confrontation Clause.

Appellant, a member of the Houston-area SPPL street gang, gathered a group of gang members
and entered the apartment of Rafael Sanchez Cantu and Abelardo Sanchez to attempt to steal
money and drugs from the two men. In the course of the robbery, both Cantu and Sanchez were
shot and killed. Appellant gave a fellow gang member, Jessica Perez, the T-shirt he had worn

A Peace Officer’s Guide to Texas Law 75 2017 Edition