Opinion ID: 1953250
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Voice Exemplar

Text: Newman next contends that the district court erred when it in effect held that he would waive his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and be subject to cross-examination if he presented a voice exemplar to the jury. Newman maintains that the court's ruling denied him due process of law because he was effectively precluded from offering the voice exemplar in his defense. It is well established that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination protects only against compulsion to engage in testimonial self-incriminating activity. United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967); Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966). Both state and federal courts have usually held that the privilege offers no protection against compulsion to submit to fingerprinting, photographing, or measurements, to write or speak for identification, to appear in court, to stand, to assume a stance, to walk, or to make a particular gesture. Schmerber, 384 U.S. at 764, 86 S.Ct. at 1832. See, also, State v. Swayze, 197 Neb. 149, 247 N.W.2d 440 (1976). Thus, a defendant may be compelled to produce a voice exemplar because [t]he results of voice identification tests fall within the category of real or physical evidence.... In such a test, the speaker is asked, not to communicate ideas or knowledge of facts, but to engage in the physiological processes necessary to produce a series of articulated sounds, the verbal meanings of which are unimportant. The sounds alone are elicited for identification purposes through characteristics such as pitch, tone, intonation, accent, and word stress. The speech patterns of individuals are distinctive physical characteristics that serve to identify them just as do other physical characteristics such as color of eyes, hair, and skin, physical build and fingerprints. People v. Ellis, 65 Cal.2d 529, 533-34, 421 P.2d 393, 395, 55 Cal.Rptr. 385, 387 (1966). See, also, Wade, supra (compelling defendant to produce voice exemplar did not violate Fifth Amendment). The U.S. Supreme Court has also held that there is no constitutional bar to compelling a grand jury witness to read transcripts of intercepted conversations into a recording device. United States v. Dionisio, 410 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 764, 35 L.Ed.2d 67 (1973). Newman urges that as the State could have compelled him to produce a voice exemplar without infringing on his Fifth Amendment privilege, due process principles of reciprocity demand that he be allowed to present a voice exemplar to the jury without waiving his privilege and becoming subject to cross-examination. Other courts which have addressed this issue have held that due process reciprocity would allow an otherwise admissible voice exemplar to be introduced by a defendant without waiving his or her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. People v. Scarola, 71 N.Y.2d 769, 525 N.E.2d 728, 530 N.Y.S.2d 83 (1988); United States v. Esdaille, 769 F.2d 104 (2d Cir.1985), cert, denied 474 U.S. 923, 106 S.Ct. 258, 88 L.Ed.2d 264. However, these courts have emphasized that the nontestimonial nature of a voice exemplar does not automatically require its admission into evidence. The defendant must still show that the voice exemplar is relevant and reliable. We conclude that if relevant and reliable, a voice exemplar may be offered into evidence by a criminal defendant without waiving his or her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Thus, the district court erred in effectively ruling that Newman's offer of a voice exemplar would waive his Fifth Amendment privilege and subject him to cross-examination. However, this does not necessarily mean that Newman was prejudiced by the district court's ruling, for the ruling may have been correct for other reasons. The question is whether the voice exemplar was relevant and possessed sufficient reliability to be admitted. The central issue at trial was the identity of the perpetrator of the crime. The victim testified she thought that her attacker had a slight Hispanic accent. The other witnesses disagreed about whether Newman had an accent. The deputy sheriff who transported Newman back from Nevada testified that Newman spoke with an accent. But Denny and Firnhaber both testified that Newman did not speak with an accent. Thus, the presentation of a voice exemplar would have been relevant evidence going to the issue of identity. That determination brings us to the question of the reliability of the proffered exemplar. For most exemplar or demonstrative evidence to be admissible, the proponent must show that the proffered evidence is reliable. In that regard, as other courts have noted, voice exemplar evidence by its very nature is different from other common types of exemplar or demonstrative evidence. Scarola, supra ; Esdaille, supra . For example, the defendant in People v. Shields, 81 A.D.2d 870, 438 N.Y.S.2d 885 (1981), attempted to display a 14- to 16-inch scar on his abdominal region that the complaining witness, a rape victim, did not mention. Since the Shields defendant proffered hospital records showing that the scar had predated the crime, there was no possibility of the scar's lack of authenticity. The same rationale has been applied to tattoos on a defendant's body. If a defendant can demonstrate that the tattoos predated the crime and that the crime victim would have had reason to notice the tattoos during the incident, it would be proper to permit the defendant to exhibit the tattoos to the jury without being subject to cross-examination. Scarola, supra . In contrast, voice exemplar evidence is relatively easy to feign. An accent can be exaggerated or muted through a person's conscious efforts, such as avoiding particular words that one cannot pronounce without an accent. Since Newman made no offer to establish the genuineness of the exemplar, it would have been properly excluded as irrelevant. That is to say, in the words of the State's objection, the conditions under which Newman spoke to the victim could not be reproduced.