Confrontation Clause Jurisprudence: The Challenge of Justice Alito’s Williams Plurality and What, If

Accurately synthesizing a rule from a plurality opinion is a complex undertaking. The authors face the challenge head-on by examining Williams v. Illinois, a case involving the Confrontation Clause. The U.S. Supreme Court in Williams considered whether an expert witness could express the opinion that the defendant’s DNA matched the DNA sample recovered from the victim — when an unaffiliated third-party laboratory created the DNA report generated from the sample. A court may take one of two lessons from Williams: the first possibility is so fact-specific that it is unlikely to reoccur, and the second is that the primary purpose test is alive and well.