Opinion ID: 2252960
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Evidence of Bloodhound Trailing

Text: Defendant contends that the trial court erred in admitting evidence concerning the actions of several bloodhounds during the police investigation which followed Jeanine's disappearance. Specifically, defendant contends that this evidence was either inadmissible per se or inadmissible in this case and was also prejudicially distorted by the State in closing argument. Lieutenant Towns-end, the police dog trainer, testified regarding his extensive background as well as the background, training and typical trailing behavior of two of his bloodhounds. According to Towns-end, his two dogs possessed a success rate of 85 percent based on the number of their finds. Towns-end allowed that his dogs were man-trailers, who follow the affluency of a scent as opposed to man-trackers, dogs which go from footprint to footprint locating the actual path taken by an individual. Towns-end testified essentially that his dogs scented Jeanine's bedclothes and then went from the front stoop of her home to a location on the Nicarico's front lawn near the curb and sat down. Towns-end also testified that one of his dogs then scented from the tire impression in the front lawn, observed near where the dogs sat down and went back to the front stoop by a slightly different path. Towns-end further related that he also allowed the same dog to scent from the footprint on the Nicarico's front door, and the dog took the same path as that taken from the front stoop. Towns-end also testified that none of the dogs indicated that a scent ended in the driveway area. Under cross-examination, Towns-end allowed that weather conditions such as wind, snow, and dryness can affect a dog's ability to trail. Significantly, Towns-end could not say that the first path taken by the dogs was the path taken by Jeanine when she was abducted or was the exact path that an individual had walked. Neither was Towns-end prepared to say that the trail had anything to do with the date of her disappearance or her abduction. Towns-end, furthermore, acknowledged that he was not attempting to convey that there was any relationship between the end of the dogs' first path and the depression in the lawn. Towns-end could only say that his dog sniffed the depression and then took a slightly different path back to the Nicarico's front door. Towns-end could offer no evidence about when the depression was made. The State relied on this bloodhound evidence to both attack the veracity of Dugan's Nicarico statements and to also support the proposition that Dugan did not act alone as indicated by those statements. The prosecutor argued in closing: When you hear the different stories that have been related through Dugan's lawyers to you, and you examine the evidence that you know in this case, you know that Brian Dugan cannot be the sole killer of Jeanine Nicarico. The evidence proves Dugan is wrong on that point, we know that there is more than one person involved, we know that there is more than one burglar and we know there is more than one killer. We have four different shoe prints found at the scene of the house. We have the bloodhounds following different trails around the house. You heard the testimony. (Emphasis added.) In this vein, the prosecutor made repeated references that the bloodhound evidence showed that Dugan was lying about putting Jeanine in his parked car in the Nicarico driveway, and that more than one path was taken by the culprits to and from the home. Years ago, this court concluded that testimony as to the trailing of either a man or an animal by a blood-hound should never be admitted in evidence in any case. ( People v. Pfanschmidt (1914), 262 Ill. 411, 461, 104 N.E. 804; but see People v. Callahan (1926), 324 Ill. 101, 111, 154 N.E. 463.) The court explained: Neither court nor jury can have any means of knowing why the dog does this thing or another, in following in one direction instead of another; that must be left to his instinct without knowing upon what it is based. The information obtainable on this subject, scientific, legal or otherwise, is not of such a character as to furnish any satisfactory basis or reason for the admission of this class of evidence.    [T]he `conclusions of the bloodhound are generally too unreliable to be accepted as evidence in either civil or criminal cases.' Pfanschmidt, 262 Ill. at 462 [104 N.E. 804], quoting Brott v. State (1903), 70 Neb. 395, 398, 97 N.W. 593, 594. The State points out that Pfanschmidt concerned dog trailing of an animal, not a human. The State maintains that Pfanschmidt is, therefore, limited to the holding that evidence concerning bloodhound trailing of an animal is inadmissible. According to the State, Pfanschmidt's statements concerning bloodhound evidence in general constitute merely dicta. Pfanschmidt discussed at length the individualized approach taken by many jurisdictions to admit this sort of evidence as it pertains to humans and explicitly rejected it in favor of a per se rule with respect to humans and animals. It is thus clear that the parties argued for the adoption of an individualized approach and the court's pronouncements on the subject constitute judicial dicta having precedential effect. (See Cates v. Cates (1993), 156 Ill.2d 76, 80, 189 Ill.Dec. 14, 619 N.E.2d 715.) Further, in People v. Wolf (1929), 334 Ill. 218, 229, 165 N.E. 619, this court was presented with the opportunity to review the admission of testimony referring to bloodhounds. The Wolf court flatly reiterated that [t]he law is    as laid down in [ Pfanschmidt ], that testimony of the trailing of either man or animal by a bloodhound should never be admitted in evidence in any case. Thus, even assuming that the statements in Pfanschmidt constitute dicta, Wolf constitutes binding authority for the rule that evidence concerning bloodhound trailing is inadmissible per se in Illinois. Cates, 156 Ill.2d at 80, 189 Ill.Dec. 14, 619 N.E.2d 715; see also People v. Griffin (1964), 48 Ill.App.2d 148, 198 N.E.2d 115. We continue to adhere to the principle that bloodhound evidence is inadmissible to establish any factual proposition in a criminal proceeding in Illinois. Having reviewed those cases admitting such evidence, we remain unpersuaded that this class of evidence is reliable. Moreover, we recognize that the real danger posed by admitting bloodhound evidence lies not simply in its failibility, but in its potential to prejudice. `It is well known that the exercise of a mysterious power not possessed by human beings begets in the minds of many people a superstitious awe   . The very name by which the animal is called has a direct tendency to enhance the impressiveness of the performance   .' ( Pfanschmidt, 262 Ill. at 458, 104 N.E. 804, quoting Pedigo v. Commonwealth (1898), 103 Ky. 41, 50, 44 S.W. 143, 145; see also 1A J. Wigmore, Evidence § 177, at 1852 (Tillers rev. 1983); see also Taslitz, Does the Cold Nose Know? The Unscientific Myth of the Dog Scent Lineup, 42 Hastings L.J. 15, 19 (1990).) We believe that such evidence is generally lacking in probative value when balanced against the dangers of unfair prejudice. Cf. People v. Zayas (1989), 131 Ill.2d 284, 137 Ill.Dec. 568, 546 N.E.2d 513 (hypnotically refreshed testimony held inadmissible per se except when defendant is witness); People v. Baynes (1981), 88 Ill.2d 225, 58 Ill.Dec. 819, 430 N.E.2d 1070 (polygraph evidence held inadmissible per se). The State correctly asserts that a majority of foreign jurisdictions admit evidence based on dog scenting or tracking on an individualized basis upon a proper foundational showing ( e.g., particular breeding and proven reliability of dog; circumstances surrounding the trailing or scenting). (See Annot., 18 A.L.R.3d 1221, 1230 (1968); Terrell v. State (1968), 3 Md. App. 340, 239 A.2d 128 (for history of dog-tracking cases).) The State attempts to distinguish Pfanschmidt from the facts before us and urges comparison of this case to that particular body of decisional law. In the State's view, Pfanschmidt's holding is primarily based on the prosecution's failure to satisfy these evidentiary foundational requirements, which were met in the instant case. We agree with the State that the circumstances in Pfanschmidt presented the court with a worst case scenario in terms of satisfying these foundational requirements. However, even were we inclined to relax Pfanschmidt 's per se rule of inadmissibility in favor of the individualized approach taken in other jurisdictions, most of the bloodhound evidence here would not pass muster. The overwhelming number of foreign cases which admit bloodhound evidence concern its use for purposes of identifying the guilty party. Generally speaking, the proper foundational requirements, according to these authorities, refer both to the qualifications of the dog and to the circumstances surrounding the trailing. (18 A.L.R.3d at 1239.) With respect to the circumstances of the trailing, it must be shown that the dog was put on the trail at some place and time where the evidence shows that the guilty party had been and had made the trail. This requirement assures that the dog's subsequent identification of a person as the guilty party has some corroborated basis. This requirement as to the circumstances of the dog trailing thus serves to insure that the evidence is relevant. Without such other evidence it could not be said that the resulting identification of a person had any connection to the crime whatsoever and the dog-trailing evidence would be entirely irrelevant on the issue of identity. (See State v. Rowland (1965), 263 N.C. 353, 139 S.E.2d 661 (discussing that defendant's possession of money established relevancy of certain dog-tracking evidence).) In other words, a dog might be a pure-bred, experienced, reliable man-trailer handled by a professional, thereby meeting certain of the foundational requirements, but if the circumstances of the dog's trailing failed to show that what it did was connected to the case, the evidence would be irrelevant and therefore inadmissible. In this manner, the individualized approach, by relying on foundational requirements, assure exclusion of irrelevant evidence. Significantly, also, in the vast majority of the foreign cases relied on by the State, the dog either actually trailed and found a defendant who was independently shown to be involved in the crime ( Terrell v. State (1968), 3 Md.App. 340, 239 A.2d 128; People v. Craig (1978), 86 Cal.App.3d 905, 150 Cal.Rptr. 676), or demonstrated a scent linkage between items independently known to belong to both defendant and victim and connected with the crime itself (see State v. Roscoe (1984), 145 Ariz. 212, 700 P.2d 1312; cf. United States v. McNiece (1983), 558 F.Supp. 612 (linkage between defendant and tools at crime scene)). In such cases, it is only because the dog actually finds the defendant or some item that is clearly relevant to the case that it becomes possible to conclude that the dog was not on a random trail. In the present case, with the exception of the last path run by the dog after it scented from the shoeprint on the front door, the circumstances of the bloodhound trailing here failed to show any connection with Jeanine's abduction. Neither the path taken by the dogs after scenting Jeanine's sheets nor the path taken after scenting the tire impression in the front lawn were shown to be connected to the kidnapping. Towns-end admitted as much. Towns-end, himself, was unable to say that the various paths taken by his dogs had anything to do with the Jeanine's abduction. Furthermore, Towns-end was even unable to say that the paths traveled by his dogs on either side of the tree were paths walked by the person supposedly leaving the scent trail. The evidence was thus incompetent to show the path by which Jeanine was taken from her home or that there was more than one path taken by any abductors. Thus, aside from any per se rule against admission of this evidence, most of the bloodhound evidence here was lacking in relevancy and should not have been admitted.