SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which STEVENS, SOUTER, THOMAS, and GINSBURG, JJ., joined.
Melendez-Diaz was charged with distributing cocaine and with trafficking in cocaine in an amount between 14 and 28 grams. Ch. 94C, §§ 32A, 32E(b)(1). At trial, the prosecution placed into evidence the bags seized from Wright and from the police cruiser. It also submitted three “certificates of analysis” showing the results of the forensic analysis performed on the seized substances. The certificates reported the weight of the seized bags and stated that the bags “[h]a[ve] been examined with the following results: The substance was found to contain: Cocaine.” . . . The certificates were sworn to before a notary public by analysts at the State Laboratory Institute of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, as required under Massachusetts law. Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 111, § 13.
Petitioner objected to the admission of the certificates, asserting that our Confrontation Clause decision in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), required the analysts to testify in person. The objection was overruled, and the certificates were admitted pursuant to state law as “prima facie evidence of the composition, quality, and the net weight of the narcotic . . . analyzed.” Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 111, § 13.
. . . .
There is little doubt that the documents at issue in this case fall within the “core class of testimonial statements” thus described [in Crawford, supra]. Our description of that category mentions affidavits twice. . . . The documents at issue here, while denominated by Massachusetts law “certificates,” are quite plainly affidavits: “declaration[s] of facts written down and sworn to by the declarant before an officer authorized to administer oaths.” Black’s Law Dictionary 62 (8th ed. 2004). They are incontrovertibly a “‘solemn declaration or affirmation made for the purpose of establishing or proving some fact.'” Crawford, supra, at 51 (quoting 2 N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)). The fact in question is that the substance found in the possession of Melendez-Diaz and his codefendants was, as the prosecution claimed, cocaine — the precise testimony the analysts would be expected to provide if called at trial. The “certificates” are functionally identical to live, in-court testimony, doing “precisely what a witness does on direct examination.” Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813, 830 (2006) (emphasis deleted).
Here, moreover, not only were the affidavits “‘made under circumstances which would lead an objective witness reasonably to believe that the statement would be available for use at a later trial,'” Crawford, supra, at 52, but under Massachusetts law the sole purpose of the affidavits was to provide “prima facie evidence of the composition, quality, and the net weight” of the analyzed substance, Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 111, § 13. We can safely assume that the analysts were aware of the affidavits’ evidentiary purpose, since that purpose — as stated in the relevant state-law provision — was reprinted on the affidavits themselves. . . . .
In short, under our decision in Crawford the analysts’ affidavits were testimonial statements, and the analysts were “witnesses” for purposes of the Sixth Amendment. Absent a showing that the analysts were unavailable to testify at trial and that petitioner had a prior opportunity to cross-examine them, petitioner was entitled to “‘be confronted with'” the analysts at trial. Crawford, supra, at 54.
. . . .
Respondent argues that the analysts’ affidavits are admissible without confrontation because they are “akin to the types of official and business records admissible at common law.” . . . But the affidavits do not qualify as traditional official or business records, and even if they did, their authors would be subject to confrontation nonetheless.
Documents kept in the regular course of business may ordinarily be admitted at trial despite their hearsay status. See Fed. Rule Evid. 803(6). But that is not the case if the regularly conducted business activity is the production of evidence for use at trial. Our decision in Palmer v. Hoffman, 318 U.S. 109 (1943), made that distinction clear. There we held that an accident report provided by an employee of a railroad company did not qualify as a business record because, although kept in the regular course of the railroad’s operations, it was “calculated for use essentially in the court, not in the business.” The analysts’ certificates — like police reports generated by law enforcement officials — do not qualify as business or public records for precisely the same reason. See Rule 803(8) (defining public records as “excluding, however, in criminal cases matters observed by police officers and other law enforcement personnel”).
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Perhaps the best indication that the sky will not fall after today’s decision is that it has not done so already. Many States have already adopted the constitutional rule we announce today, [footnote omitted] while many others permit the defendant to assert (or forfeit by silence) his Confrontation Clause right after receiving notice of the prosecution’s intent to use a forensic analyst’s report . . . . Despite these widespread practices, there is no evidence that the criminal justice system has ground to a halt in the States that, one way or another, empower a defendant to insist upon the analyst’s appearance at trial. Indeed, in Massachusetts itself, a defendant may subpoena the analyst to appear at trial, . . . and yet there is no indication that obstructionist defendants are abusing the privilege.
The dissent finds this evidence “far less reassuring than promised.” . . . But its doubts rest on two flawed premises. First, the dissent believes that those state statutes  “requiring the defendant to give early notice of his intent to confront the analyst,” are “burden-shifting statutes [that] may be invalidated by the Court’s reasoning.” . . .That is not so. In their simplest form, notice-and-demand statutes require the prosecution to provide notice to the defendant of its intent to use an analyst’s report as evidence at trial, after which the defendant is given a period of time in which he may object to the admission of the evidence absent the analyst’s appearance live at trial. . . . Contrary to the dissent’s perception, these statutes shift no burden whatever. The defendant always has the burden of raising his Confrontation Clause objection; notice-and-demand statutes simply govern the time within which he must do so. States are free to adopt procedural rules governing objections. . . . It is common to require a defendant to exercise his rights under the Compulsory Process Clause in advance of trial, announcing his intent to present certain witnesses.  See Fed. Rules Crim. Proc. 12.1(a), (e), 16(b)(1)(C); Comment: Alibi Notice Rules: The Preclusion Sanction as Procedural Default, 51 U. Chi. L. Rev. 254, 254-255, 281-285 (1984) (discussing and cataloguing State notice-of-alibi rules); Taylor v. Illinois, 484 U.S. 400, 411 (1988); Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 81-82 (1970). There is no conceivable reason why he cannot similarly be compelled to exercise his Confrontation Clause rights before trial. See Hinojos-Mendoza v. People, 169 P. 3d 662, 670 (Colo. 2007) (discussing and approving Colorado’s notice-and-demand provision). Today’s decision will not disrupt criminal prosecutions in the many large States whose practice is already in accord with the Confrontation Clause.
. . . .
This case involves little more than the application of our holding in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36. The Sixth Amendment does not permit the prosecution to prove its case via ex parte out-of-court affidavits, and the admission of such evidence against Melendez-Diaz was error. [Footnote omitted.] We therefore reverse the judgment of the Appeals Court of Massachusetts and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
JUSTICE THOMAS, concurring:
I write separately to note that I continue to adhere to my position that “the Confrontation Clause is implicated by extrajudicial statements only insofar as they are contained in formalized testimonial materials, such as affidavits, depositions, prior testimony, or confessions.”
JUSTICE KENNEDY, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE BREYER, and JUSTICE ALITO join, dissenting:
The Court sweeps away an accepted rule governing the admission of scientific evidence. Until today, scientific analysis could be introduced into evidence without testimony from the “analyst” who produced it. This rule has been established for at least 90 years. It extends across at least 35 States and six Federal Courts of Appeals. Yet the Court undoes it based on two recent opinions that say nothing about forensic analysts: Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), and Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813 (2006).
It is remarkable that the Court so confidently disregards a century of jurisprudence. We learn now that we have misinterpreted the Confrontation Clause — hardly an arcane or seldom-used provision of the Constitution — for the first 218 years of its existence. The immediate systemic concern is that the Court makes no attempt to acknowledge the real differences between laboratory analysts who perform scientific tests and other, more conventional witnesses — “witnesses” being the word the Framers used in the Confrontation Clause.
Crawford and Davis dealt with ordinary witnesses — women who had seen, and in two cases been the victim of, the crime in question. Those cases stand for the proposition that formal statements made by a conventional witness — one who has personal knowledge of some aspect of the defendant’s guilt — may not be admitted without the witness appearing at trial to meet the accused face to face. But Crawford and Davis do not say — indeed, could not have said, because the facts were not before the Court — that anyone who makes a testimonial statement is a witness for purposes of the Confrontation Clause, even when that person has, in fact, witnessed nothing to give them personal knowledge of the defendant’s guilt.
Because Crawford and Davis concerned typical witnesses, the Court should have done the sensible thing and limited its holding to witnesses as so defined. Indeed, as JUSTICE THOMAS warned in his opinion in Davis, Â the Court’s approach has become “disconnected from history and unnecessary to prevent abuse.” 547 U.S., at 838. The Court’s reliance on the word “testimonial” is of little help, of course, for that word does not appear in the text of the Clause.
The Court dictates to the States, as a matter of constitutional law, an as-yet-undefined set of rules governing what kinds of evidence may be admitted without in-court testimony. Indeed, under today’s opinion the States bear an even more onerous burden than they did before Crawford. Then, the States at least had the guidance of the hearsay rule and could rest assured that “where the evidence f[ell] within a firmly rooted hearsay exception,” the Confrontation Clause did not bar its admission. Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56, 66 (1980) (overruled by Crawford). Now, without guidance from any established body of law, the States can only guess what future rules this Court will distill from the sparse constitutional text.