Title: Miller v. State
Citation: 399 S.W.2d 268
Docket Number: 5165
State: Arkansas
Issuer: Arkansas Supreme Court
Date: February 21, 1966

399 S.W.2d 268 (1966) Leland MILLER, Appellant, v. The STATE of Arkansas, Appellee. No. 5165. Supreme Court of Arkansas. February 21, 1966. *269 W. B. Howard, Jack Segars, Jonesboro, for appellant. Bruce Bennett, Atty. Gen., Clyde Calliotte, Asst. Atty. Gen., Little Rock, for appellee. JOHNSON, Justice. This appeal from a burglary conviction questions the admissibility of certain expert opinion testimony. Appellant Leland Miller was charged by information in Greene Circuit Court with the crime of burglary, specifically with breaking into an office building on June 21, 1964, with intent to commit larceny. Trial before a jury on May 18, 1965, resulted in a verdict of guilty of burglary as charged. From judgment on the verdict comes this appeal. The state's case was based on circumstantial evidence. During a routine patrol after midnight, police officers noticed that drapes which were supposed to be open in the office building had been closed. When the officers investigated, they found a door open and no one in the building. Appellant's unoccupied car was parked about onequarter mile away. There were footprints leading from the building to a ditch some distance away where someone had apparently fallen in the mud; appellee's expert witness testified that a dirt sample taken from the ditch corresponded to dirt taken from appellant's clothes, and that a piece of cloth found on a barbed wire fence some distance from the building corresponded with the cloth of a shirt in appellant's possession at the time of his arrest. For reversal appellant first urges that the trial court erred in admitting the testimony of Dr. Dan Matthews, speculating as to the probabilities that dirt from appellant's clothing came from the scene of the burglary. Dr. Matthews was called as an expert witness by the state. In the initial examination, he stated that his profession was "chemist with the University of Arkansas with the Graduate Institute of Technology in Little Rock." The next question about his background, training and experience elicited the following response: Appellant maintains that he is not urging that the witness "was incompetent or unqualified to make the comparison tests in question and to testify as to the points of similarity, but rather that in giving the objectionable testimony the witness departed from the field in which he was qualified as an expert and proceeded to engage in speculation and conjecture * * *." Dr. Matthews had made no tests on which he could reasonably base his probabilities of one in ten on soil color, one in one hundred on soil texture, or one in one thousand on soil density (which he multiplied together to obtain his one-in-one-million figure), nor did he base his testimony on studies of such tests made by others. He admitted that his figures were predicated on "estimates" and "assumptions". In short, there is no foundation upon which to base his probabilities of one in a million. Admission of the unsubstantiated, speculative testimony on probabilities was clearly erroneous. See Little v. George Feed &amp; Supply Co, 233 Ark. 78, 342 S.W.2d 668; 2 Wharton's Criminal Evidence, § 505, p. 328 (12th ed. 1955). Appellant also contends that the trial court erred in admitting the testimony of the sheriff, "who had associated with the jurors to such an extent as to make the admission of his testimony a deprivation of appellant's constitutional right to a fair and impartial trial and due process of law." Appellant urges that the sheriff had been so closely associated with the jury panel during the term of court that the jurors would give the sheriff's testimony undue weight. Examining the facts here in the light of Turner v. State of Louisiana, 379 U.S. 466, 85 S. Ct. 546, 13 L. Ed. 2d 424, on which appellant relies, we do not find the cases so closely analogous as to reflect the existence here of the evil sought to be corrected in Turner. *271 For the error in the admission of Dr. Matthews' testimony concerning probabilities, the case is reversed and the cause remanded for a new trial.