Opinion ID: 2323084
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Probative Value of Dr. Van Wallendael's Proffered Testimony

Text: In order to determine whether appellant was prejudiced by the exclusion of Dr. Van Wallendael's proffered testimony, we must assess its value to appellant's defense. The court's ruling did not wholly or even substantially deprive appellant of the opportunity to present evidence challenging the reliability of the eyewitnesses' identification testimony. Examining the expert's testimony not in a vacuum, but in the context of appellant's trial, we perceive no reasonable probability that it would have created an otherwise-nonexistent reasonable doubt of appellant's guilt in the minds of the jury. Rather, we find it highly probable that the trial court's presumptively erroneous exclusion of the testimony made no difference to the outcome of appellant's trial. We therefore conclude that the putative error was non-constitutionalit did not deprive appellant of a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defenseand harmless in Kotteakos terms. We reach these conclusions because Dr. Van Wallendael's proffered testimony simply had too little to say about the identifications it was meant to undercut. Dr. Van Wallendael would have opined that stress, weapon focus, and deficient police procedures reduce the reliability of identifications made by crime victims and witnesses of unknown perpetrators, and that some misidentifications of strangers may be attributable to a phenomenon known as unconscious transference. [52] In the first place, this expert testimony would have been of scant relevance to the identifications of appellant by Ms. Ervin and Ms. Carter, whatever the reliability of those identifications, because they already knew appellant at the time of the shooting. There is no indication that their ability to recognize him as one of the shooters was impaired by any of the factors Dr. Van Wallendael would have discussed, or that an unconscious transference was at work in their cases. [53] The target of the expert's testimony would have been Ms. Edwards, the one identification witness to whom appellant was a stranger. Even so, Dr. Van Wallendael's expertise would have been unlikely to help the jury evaluate her identification. Ms. Edwards did not claim she saw appellant's face during or after the shooting; rather, she claimed to remember him as one of the men she saw approaching the car before the attack, at a time when she was at ease and not aware of any threat. Dr. Van Wallendael's testimony that stress and weapon focus may undermine an identification based on observations made under the influence of those factors therefore would have been beside the point. Appellant did not proffer that the circumstances of the shooting would have influenced Ms. Edwards's memory of preceding events. [54] Similarly, so far as appears, Dr. Van Wallendael would not have identified any significant flaws in the procedure through which Ms. Edwards selected appellant's photograph. [55] Appellant hangs his hat on Dr. Van Wallendael's testimony regarding the unconscious transference phenomenon. He argues that this phenomenon would have explained how Ms. Edwards could have misidentified appellant as a result of having glimpsed him on the scene in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. But even assuming that, after a hearing, the trial court would have found the expert's testimony to be admissible under the criteria set forth in Dyas, [56] the proffer stated only that an unconscious transference can occur. Among other things, the proffer said nothing about the prevalence of the phenomenon, the conditions under which it is likely to occur (or whether those conditions were present in this case), or how it may be recognized or ruled out. At most, in other words, it appears from the record that Dr. Van Wallendael might have testified that an unconscious transference was theoretically possible in this case, but not that it was likely or probable under circumstances resembling Ms. Edwards's experience. The possibility of an unconscious transference depended, moreover, on whether Ms. Edwards in fact saw appellant on the scene after the shooting. But Ms. Edwards did not remember seeing him there, and there is no evidence establishing that she did see him. Further, Dr. Van Wallendael's testimony would not have undermined the central strength of the prosecution's case: the fact that Ms. Ervin and Ms. Edwards independently identified appellant as one of the shooters without having communicated with each other and without having learned that appellant was a suspect (not to mention the added fact that their identifications were corroborated by Ms. Carter). Viewing the witnesses' identifications in isolation, the jury potentially could have discounted them: Perhaps Ms. Ervin had a motive to frame appellant in order to obtain the benefits of her cooperation agreement, and perhaps Ms. Edwards's visceral reaction when appellant entered her store could be attributed to her unconscious memory of his presence on the scene after the shooting. (And perhaps Ms. Carter simply mistook the person she saw running from the scene for appellant because they did, in fact, resemble each other.) But the witnesses' identifications of appellant were mutually reinforcing, and that made the alternative explanations advanced by the defense less probable. The defense offered no explanation, other than sheer coincidence, for how Ms. Ervin, supposedly looking for someone to frame, happened to pick the one innocent person who, though innocent, would so distress Ms. Edwards in a chance meeting at her place of work some eight months after the shooting. Dr. Van Wallendael's testimony would not have made such an unlikely coincidence seem plausible. Finally, the exclusion of the identification expert's testimony did not foreclose appellant from mounting a vigorous challenge to Ms. Edwards's identification of him. Appellant conducted ample cross-examination of Ms. Edwards on her ability to observe and identify the shooters. [57] Notably, defense counsel cross-examined her about her post-traumatic reconstruction of events and her lack of a clear view during the attack, leaving little to be gained from an expert's pronouncements on stress and weapon focus. Counsel also interrogated Ms. Edwards about her adverse reactions to other men besides appellant who had dark complexions and dreadlocks. In closing, the defense emphasized the realistic possibility that Ms. Edwards had made a mistake in identifying appellant. [58] Appellant was able to urge the jury to draw the common-sense inference that Ms. Edwards had mistaken appellant for one of the shooters based on her confused memories of the event and the similarity in appearance between the two men. To be sure, the jury did not hear about the abstract possibility of an unconscious transference, to which only an expert could have testified. But we are persuaded that testimony as limited as that which appellant proffered would not have made a difference. [59] The dissent contends that the prosecution's evidence was weaker in this case than it was in either Russell v. United States [60] or Benn II, [61] where we found reversible error in the trial court's failure to hold a Dyas hearing on expert identification testimony proffered by the defense. [62] But the question is not whether the identification testimony was strong or weak; it is whether Dr. Van Wallendael's proffered testimony could have influenced the jury's decision in light of the facts in this particular case. In both Russell and Benn II, the proffered expert testimony was material to the credibility of each of the government eyewitnesses. In Russell, for example, expert opinion regarding weapons focus was highly relevant, because the victim in that case based his identification at least in part on observations he made during the armed robbery, even though he also happened to have seen his attacker prior to the crime. [63] Similarly, in Benn II, the proffered expert testimony addressed the unreliability [of] stranger-to-stranger eyewitness identifications, and the government's case hinged on five such identifications that were not independent: The witnesses were able to confer between their viewings of the photographic lineup, and they gave suspiciously similar responses, with three of them stating in identical language that they were 95% certain they had identified the correct man. [64] In contrast to the potentially material expert testimony proffered in Russell and Benn II, the proffered testimony in the present case would have been of scant relevance to the jury's evaluation of the identifications. In sum, the probative value to appellant's defense of Dr. Van Wallendael's proffered testimony was slight at best. We see no reasonable probability that its putatively erroneous exclusion contributed to the verdict against appellant. Therefore, although the trial court did not evaluate the admissibility of the testimony under the Dyas criteria in accordance with our opinion in Benn II, we will not remand for the court to conduct that inquiry now. The error, if any, was non-constitutional and harmless.