WASHINGTON
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The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether prosecutors can use crime lab reports as evidence without having the forensic analyst who prepared them testify at trial.
The reliability of crime labs has been questioned in several states and at the federal level in recent years.
State and federal courts have come to different conclusions about whether recent Supreme Court decisions affirming the constitutional right of a defendant to confront his accusers extend to lab reports that are used in many drug cases.
The justices declined a separate case from Iowa, raising a similar question about the use of videotaped interviews in child sex abuse cases.
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