From Washington Post:

The emergency changes to state law will be effective as soon as Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) signs the bill.

The legislation emerged from a special session convened by Kaine to address a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that threw Virginia’s criminal justice system into an uproar. The Supreme Court, in the landmark Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts case, ruled that certificates of analysis, such as drug examinations or blood alcohol tests, are subject to cross-examination under the constitutional right to confront one’s accuser. Simply submitting a piece of paper was not sufficient, the court said.

Defense attorneys began demanding that the state’s 43 drug examiners appear in court to testify about their analyses and that prosecutors subpoena the three technicians who calibrate all of the state’s breath-testing machines as well. When the examiners or technicians couldn’t appear, judges sometimes threw out the cases.

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