Opinion ID: 1527587
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Probative Value, Prejudice, and the Sufficiency of the Limiting Instruction.

Text: Even if, as we have concluded, the psychiatric witnesses testified on the basis of the kind of data on which experts in their field reasonably rely, we have some concern for another reason about the admission and use of the evidence. If we look at the substance rather than the form of what occurred, the second-hand testimony about Melton having punched his mother came to the jurors' attention in such a way that they might well have considered it for the truth of the out-of-court statement. This may also have occurred with respect to some other incidents. On October 17, 1985, Dr. Byrd testified that Melton became impulsive and lost control of his temper, which is a characteristic of a schizophrenic. And he punched his mother in the nose and became very angry with her. The trial judge gave no contemporaneous instruction as to the purpose for which this testimony was received. It was not until four days later, during his final instructions, that the judge told the jurors, with respect to testimony by Dr. Byrd and Dr. Cornet as to information given to them by other individuals, that these statements are admitted only to demonstrate the information relied upon by the doctors in forming their conclusion. They are to be considered by you only for the purpose of evaluating the reasonableness and correctness of the doctors' conclusions. They are not to be considered by you as actual proof of the incidents described. They are hearsay and as such are not admissible to establish the truth of the matters asserted by them. This court has recently noted that some students of the law of evidence consider the distinction sought to be articulated in such a limiting instruction as most unlikely to be made by juries. Samuels, supra note 10, 507 A.2d at 153 n. 5. As Judge Salzman aptly remarked for the court in that case, [c]onceptual problems are bound to arise when a judge tells a jury that the jury may consider psychiatric diagnoses based on medical records customarily relied on in professional practice, but then tells the jury that it may not consider the `truthfulness' of those records for any other purpose. Id. With his customary eloquence, Justice Cardozo made a similar point for the Court in a somewhat different context in Shepard v. United States, 290 U.S. 96, 104, 54 S.Ct. 22, 25, 78 L.Ed. 196 (1933): Discrimination so subtle is a feat beyond the compass of ordinary minds. The reverberating clang of those accusatory words would drown all weaker sounds. It is for ordinary minds, and not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are framed. See also Clark v. United States, 593 A.2d 186, 191 (D.C.1991). The conceptual problems to which we referred in Samuels are especially serious with respect to a discrete dramatic act like punching one's mother on the nose. To tell the jurors that they are to consider the testimony about the punch as a basis for the expert's finding of dangerousness, but not with respect to whether Mr. Melton punched his mother, may call for mental gymnastics which only the most pristine theoretician could perform. We suspect that the reaction of that elusive individual, the reasonable person, would be that you cannot believe that the testimony about the punch tends to show that Melton is dangerous unless you first believe that he actually punched his mother. See Clark, supra, 593 A.2d at 193-94; Giles v. United States, 432 A.2d 739, 745-46 (D.C.1981). Since the expert apparently believed that he punched her, the jury was likely to believe it too. The distinction sought to be made may therefore become ephemeral. Thompson v. United States, 546 A.2d 414, 421 (D.C.1988). The problem is a perplexing one, because it is difficult to articulate reasonable or workable limits on any rule which would exclude testimony of the kind here at issue and still vindicate the policies underlying Rule 703. In the present case, however, the appeal was at least initially predicated upon the lack of a finding by the trial judge that the out-of-court statement was of a kind reasonably relied upon by experts in the field, with only a conditional allusion to the potential difficulty the jury might have with the task of confining its consideration of such evidence to the purposes for which it was received. [28] Similarly, no contention was made in the trial court that a limiting instruction would be ineffective, or even that such an instruction ought to have been given earlier, or in a different and more emphatic form. Unfortunately, the abbreviated way in which the trial judge dealt with the socalled hearsay issue made it difficult for Melton's counsel to expound his theory fully. [29] As we have previously noted, the trial judge has the authority to exclude otherwise admissible expert testimony if he or she is of the opinion that such testimony would be more prejudicial than probative. In the present case, at least, if Melton's mother had been available to testify, [30] it would have been a permissible exercise of the judge's discretion to condition admission of the expert testimony (regarding the allegation that Melton punched the mother) on the District's also calling the mother to testify and on its making her available for cross-examination. Given the posture of the issue both in the trial court and on appeal, however, we conclude that Melton has failed to show that the trial judge abused his discretion in receiving the evidence. See Samuels, supra note 10, 507 A.2d at 153.