Antonio B. Nascimento-Depina v. Massachusetts

Whether, after a state supreme court expressly acknowledging that admitting surrogate DNA-analyst testimony violated the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process, that court should not affirm a conviction on the rationale that the error was harmless because the case “turned entirely on the victim’s credibility”—a method of review that (1) conflicts with this Court’s requirement that harmless-error analysis ask whether a rational JURY, not an appellate court, could have reached a different verdict; and (2) is outcome-determinative in this and many similar prosecutions that rely on forensic certificates.