No testimony needed by anyone getting a tag number

The Tennessee Supreme Court last Thursday said that a bystander outside a crime scene who writes down a license plate number does not have to be present at trial to testify against the accused.
The opinion stems from a 2006 Memphis robbery at a dry cleaning store. A bystander outside the cleaner’s wrote down the tag number of a white minivan that was leaving the parking lot, and handed the paper to the victim.
Police traced the tag number back to Darrell Franklin, who was later identified by the store clerk as the man who robbed her.
Franklin was later convicted of one count of robbery, but the conviction was overturned after the man’s lawyers said the tag number never should have been introduced at trial without the bystander testifying.