State v. Willis

This is a criminal case in which defendant was convicted after a jury trial of the crime of unlawful possession of a controlled substance — in this case, methamphetamine. Defendant appealed her conviction to the Court of Appeals, asserting that the trial court erred in admitting a scientific report authored by a state police criminalist that identified a particular substance seized from defendant as methamphetamine. (The criminalist was not present to testify.) The state conceded that the admission of the report without supporting testimony from the criminalist was error, but asserted that…