California Court of Appeal

Conviction of defendant on multiple counts of kidnapping and sex-related crimes is affirmed where defendant's Sixth Amendment right of confrontation was not violated by admission of a lead nurse practitioner's testimony regarding a report prepared by a nontestifying nurse, as People v. Geier (2007) 41 Cal.4th 555 is still controlling law after Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S.Ct. 2527 (2009), where the supervisor of the analyst who prepared the reports testified at trial and Melendez-Diaz involved only "near-contemporaneous" affidavits that were prepared almost one week after the tests were performed, whereas this case involves contemporaneous recordation of observable events. To the extent the narrative portion of the report ran afoul of defendant's right of confrontation, the violation did not result in prejudicial error as there was nothing in the narrative portion of the report potentially damaging to defendant's case.

Appellate Information

• Decided 09/09/2009
• Published 09/09/2009

Judges

• ROTHSCHILD, J.

Court

• California Court of Appeal

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• Vanessa Place, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, Los Angeles, for Defendant and Appellant., Edmund G. Brown Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Pamela C. Hamanaka, Assistant Attorney General, Kenneth C. Byrne and Eric J. Kohm, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.