In September 2009 the juvenile court adjudicated L.H.Lambatos' opinion regarding whether Cellmark followed proper guidelines at the time the DNA material was extracted and amplified was not based on anything other than her rank speculation that it "had to have been done" solely because Cellmark was an accredited lab. 1978) (allowing physician expert to testify under Rule 703 as to the patient's version of other doctors' opinion because expert had reports of two doctors as well as a hospital report). 1981) (allowing testifying psychiatrist to base opinion under Rule 703 on staff reports and defendant's interviews with other physicians) O'Gee v. Further, Lambatos did not base her assumption that "certain guidelines *** would have had to have been in place" on sources such as the report of another expert, i.e., the written report of the technicians who generated the profile or even the lab's logbook at the time the profile was generated. Here, Lambatos' testimony does not establish that Cellmark was accredited rather, it was her opinion that the laboratory was accredited at the time it ran the tests. Whether a laboratory is accredited is a fact that can be established without the need of an expert witness. First, with respect to the fact of accreditation, Lambatos did not identify when or by whom Cellmark received its accreditation. Lambatos' testimony on this point is insufficient.I note that the court stressed, in reaching its conclusion, that the foundational testimony was stronger than that in this case, specifically citing the Third Division's opinion in this case. She also performed an independent review of the work to make sure all of the procedures done at the lab were followed correctly, which the court held was sufficient foundation upon which to partially base her assessment and conclusion. In holding that an adequate foundation for Cellmark's work had been established for the Cellmark witness, the court found it significant that the witness actually worked for Cellmark, which was the lab that generated the DNA profile from the victim's samples. Like Lambatos, he testified as to the statistical probabilities of the match. Another witness, who like Lambatos was employed by Illinois State Police, testified that he compared the Cellmark-generated male DNA profile to the DNA panel he had generated from saliva obtained from the defendant and concluded that they were a match. In particular, the witness relied on a written Cellmark report, which indicated that 10 Cellmark analysts had been involved in the lab work in the case and that all the methods used, conclusions and results reached were to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty. Johnson, a panel of the First Division of the First District held that a sufficient foundation was established where the DNA expert, an actual employee of Cellmark, testified that although she did not personally perform any of the testing used to generate the male DNA profile from the sexual assault kit, she based her opinion on records used in the ordinary course of business.
Two cases from our appellate court support my point regarding foundation.
In other words, Lambatos' foundational testimony was based upon data reasonably relied upon by other experts in her field, and defendant's appellate concerns relate to the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility. The court concludes that because witnesses like Lambatos are permitted in Illinois to give an opinion without disclosing the facts or data upon which the expert bases her opinion, such testimony is sufficient.