Opinion ID: 824281
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: testimony of dr. leo

Text: I do not believe that the trial court abused its discretion by excluding Leo’s testimony pursuant to MRE 702. For the reasons explained by the lead opinion, I agree that Leo’s proposed testimony was not the product of reliable principles and methods and thus is inadmissible on this basis alone. However, I disagree with the lead opinion’s conclusion that had Leo’s testimony been the product of reliable principles and methods, it would have been admissible. I do not believe that the trial court abused its discretion by concluding that Leo’s proposed testimony would not “assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue . . . .” MRE 702. “‘Expert testimony is not admissible . . . when it merely deals with a proposition that is not beyond the ken of common knowledge.’” Gilbert, 470 Mich at 790 (citation and emphasis omitted). Leo proposed to testify that people sometimes falsely confess. However, this is not a proposition that is outside the “common knowledge” of the average juror. Jurors, as ordinary members of the community with ordinary measures of judgment, common sense, experience, and personal insight, understand that people sometimes falsely confess, although jurors also understand that false confessions are far from the norm. Defendant argues that jurors have a tendency to believe that people will not confess to a crime that they did not commit. Quite likely, defendant is correct. However, this asserted tendency is not inconsistent with Leo’s own testimony at the Daubert hearing. Leo testified that most jurors assume that if the defendant confessed he is “probably 5 guilty,” but Leo also acknowledged that “most confessions are true” and that “false confessions are the exception.” Therefore, as long as the prosecutor does not argue that people never falsely confess, which he has not argued here, Leo’s proposed testimony that false confessions are possible offers absolutely nothing of relevance to the jury. “[T]here is no need for expert testimony that tells the jury what it already knows.” Comment, The (In)admissibility of False Confession Expert Testimony, 26 Touro L R 23, 58 (2010). “As it stands, most jurors have a nuanced understanding that false confessions occur, but only rarely. An expert witness that simply repeats this fact is not ‘assisting the trier of fact.’” Id. at 59. As one commentator explained: False confession theorists . . . [argue that] false confession expert testimony helps combat against . . . the myth that false confessions do not occur. However, the numbers simply do not support the notion that this myth exists. For instance, one statistic used to demonstrate this myth is that sixty eight percent of potential jurors in the District of Columbia believe that suspects falsely confess “not very often” or “almost never.” Implying that these answers foreclose even the possibility of false confessions within the minds of jurors is simply wordplay: “not very often” and “almost never” do not mean “never.” In fact, the data clearly corroborates most jurors’ beliefs that concede the possibility of a false confession in a given case, while also noting its statistical improbability. The notion that some suspects might confess to something they did not do is within the common knowledge of jurors. [Id. at 56-57, citing in part Leo, Police Interrogation and American Justice, p 196 (2008).] Because Leo’s proposed testimony concerning the existence of false confessions is “‘not beyond the ken of common knowledge,’” Gilbert, 470 Mich at 790 (citation omitted), it is unlikely to “assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue,” MRE 702, and thus is inadmissible under MRE 702.1 1 The lead opinion contends that its conclusion that the fact that someone might falsely confess is “contrary to common sense” is supported by “[o]ur ‘statement against interest’ 6 Leo also proposed to testify that certain interrogation techniques are associated with false confessions. However, given that he admitted that these same interrogation techniques are also associated with true confessions, I fail to see how this testimony could assist the jury.2 Informing the jury that certain interrogation techniques result in exception to the hearsay rule [which] embodies [the] presumption . . . ‘that a reasonable person . . . would not have made [such a] statement unless believing it to be true.’” Ante at 20, quoting MRE 804(b)(3). However, what the lead opinion wholly fails to recognize is that Leo does not dispute that people generally do not falsely confess. Leo knows this, and jurors know this. Leo and jurors also know that there are exceptions to this general presumption and that people sometimes do falsely confess. There is absolutely nothing inconsistent between the notions that people generally do not falsely confess and that people sometimes do falsely confess and I do not believe that either of these notions lies outside the common knowledge of jurors. See State v Free, 351 NJ Super 203, 220; 798 A2d 83 (2002) (citation omitted) (“Although our rules of evidence recognize that people do not usually make statements against their penal interest unless they are true, it does not follow that ordinary jurors believe that all confessions made by defendants subjected to police interrogation are true.”); see also Comment, 26 Touro L R at 53 (“That false confessions occur is a matter of fact; however, it is also true that false confessions are rare.”). 2 For example, Leo testified: [P]olice using coercive techniques sometimes results in true confessions, sometimes results in false confessions.