Opinion ID: 768682
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The District Court's Application of Daubert

Text: 61 The majority finds that the district court abused its discretion by failing to apply the evidentiary gatekeeping principles of Daubert.I am not convinced that the court committed this error, or that remand would be necessary even if it did. 62 The majority pays passing obeisance to the abuse of discretion standard by which we review a district court's decision to exclude expert testimony, but wholly fails to apply in this case the deference that standard requires. The factors listed in Daubert were meant to suggest to federal courts the relevant subjects of analysis when evaluating proffered experts under Rule 702, but they are not holy writ that the district court must invoke by name in order to pass our scrutiny. Kumho Tire Co. Ltd. v. Carmichael, 119 S.Ct. 1167, 1179 (1999) (Scalia, J., concurring). The Supreme Court has recently instructed that 63 The trial court must have the same kind of latitude in deciding how to test an expert's reliability, and to decide whether or when special briefing or other proceedings are needed to investigate reliability, as it enjoys when it decides whether or not that expert's relevant testimony is reliable. Our opinion in Joiner makes clear that a court of appeals is to apply an abuse-of-discretion standard when it reviews a trial court's decision to admit or exclude expert testimony. That standard applies as much to the trial court's decisions about how to determine reliability as to its ultimate conclusion. Otherwise, the trial judge would lack the discretionary authority needed both to avoid unnecessary reliability proceedings in ordinary cases where the reliability of an expert's methods is properly taken for granted, and to require appropriate proceedings in the less usual or more complex cases where cause for questioning the expert's reliability arises. Indeed, the Rules seek to avoid unjustifiable expense and delay as part of their search for truth and the just determination of proceedings. Thus, whether Daubert's specific factors are, or are not, reasonable measures of reliability in a particular case is a matter that the law grants the trial judge broad latitude to determine. And the Eleventh Circuit erred insofar as it held to the contrary. 64 Kumho Tire, 119 S.Ct. at 1176 (internal citations, quotations and alterations omitted). The court's failure specifically to cite Daubert as its basis for excluding Dr. Fulero does not itself mandate remand. See Greenwell v. Boatwright, 184 F.3d 492, 498 (6th Cir. 1999) (Although the trial court is not required to hold an actual hearing to comply with Daubert, the court is required to make an initial assessment of the relevance and reliability of the expert testimony. Because the district court did not hold a Daubert hearing we must review the record to determine whether the district court erred in its assessment of the relevance and reliability of the expert testimony); see also Hall, 165 F.3d at 1102 (approving of the district court's evaluation of the testimony in a hearing that did not explicitly cite the two Daubert prongs but frequently referenced the decision). Instead, our task is to review the district court's performance of its gatekeeping function in light of the facts of [the] particular case, Kumho Tire, 119 S.Ct. at 1175 (internal quotations omitted), granting the trial judge [ ] considerable leeway in deciding in [this] particular case how to go about determining whether [this] particular expert testimony is reliable. Id. at 1176. In so doing, we must be mindful of the principles behind Daubert, but the factors it mentions do not constitute a definitive checklist or test. Id. at 1175 (internal quotations omitted). 65 I would hold that the way in which the district court conducted its analysis of the admissibility of Dr. Fulero's testimony was not abusive of the court's discretion. The core holding of the Daubert decision was that admission of expert testimony is governed by the Federal Rules of Evidence and not the theretofore majority rule of general acceptance by the scientific community. See Daubert, 509 U.S. at 587. The primary locusof the court's power to evaluate experts rests in Rule 702. See id. at 589. Rule 702 requires that the testimony be reliable and relevant to be admitted. Because the Government has chosen not to contest Dr. Fulero's qualifications as a psychologist or the abstract scientific validity of the studies he proposes to testify from, either at trial or on appeal, we may assume that Smithers has satisfied the reliability requirement. See Greenwell, 184 F.3d at 498. Instead, the Government has consistently focused its challenge on the relevance aspect of Rule 702, which further requires that the evidence or testimony assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or determine a fact in issue. [...] The consideration has been aptly described . . . as one of 'fit.' 'Fit' is not always obvious, and scientific validity for one purpose is not necessarily scientific validity for other, unrelated purposes. Daubert, 509 U.S. at 591 (internal quotations omitted). The district court here examined briefs on the issue from both sides in preparation for the hearing on Smithers's limine motion. Both briefs recited the applicable factors from Daubert and Rules 702 and 403. Both examined the leading cases on this type of testimony, both before and after Daubert, focusing especially on United States v. Rincon, 28 F.3d 921 (9th Cir. 1994) and our decision in United States v. Smith, 736 F.2d 1103 (6th Cir. 1984) (per curiam). The Government's brief went further to explain why the testimony would be unhelpful and prejudicial in this case, and why cross-examination and jury instructions would better address Smithers's concerns. The court demonstrated its reliance on these briefs when it began the relevant portion of the motion hearing by noting its belief that the Government's arguments were persuasive, informing Smithers that he could discredit the eyewitness identifications through cross-examination, and asking for Smithers's assistance in choosing an appropriate jury instruction. As recounted above, the court pressed Smithers for additional details on how Fulero's testimony would relate to the facts of the case, but no such details were forthcoming. This left the court with little basis upon which to conclude that the Government was in error in its contention that the testimony would only confuse the jury and invade its province by commenting directly on the credibility of the witnesses. Whether Smithers was unable to demonstrate the relevance of the testimony at this hearing on the first day of trial or was simply procrastinating, the onus should fall on him; the court dealt appropriately with the information and arguments presented to it. 66 The court also acted properly once Smithers--at the close of his defense--finally proffered the details of Fulero's testimony. At one point during the hearing on the renewed motion to permit Fulero to testify, the court-- addressing the prosecutor--explained its reliance on Rincon, and noted, consistent with the reliability element of Daubert, that the good professor in his affidavit and in his background and in the literature that was cited to me suggests that the fragility . . . of eyewitness testimony has been established scientifically and that he brings an expertise that may assist the jury. How the majority can hold, in light of this statement and the Government's decision not to challenge Fulero's competence, that the district court did not make any determination as to this expert's scientific reasoning or methodology is puzzling. And because reliability was never at issue, any further inquiry into the reliability of the testimony was unnecessary and, indeed, is precisely the kind of proceeding that Kumho Tire expressly gives the district courts the discretion to avoid. 67 The majority acknowledges that although the district court did not explicitly explain that it was doing so, it did conduct some inquiry into relevance when it decided that the jury was aware of its obligation to be skeptical of eyewitness testimony. The record of the second hearing, however, reveals that the district court in factlooked carefully at the issue of relevance. Even at this point, Smithers did not make Dr. Fulero available for voir dire by the Government, but the court initiated a lengthy discussion with Smithers's counsel on Fulero's familiarity with the facts of the case, including Smithers's scar, the photo lineup procedure, and the stress of the robbery. These are precisely the questions the district court needed to ask to determine the relevance and fit of Fulero's testimony to the particular facts of the case. After hearing Smithers's answers, the court concluded that Fulero would have acted in this case as more of an advocate than a neutral, scientific expert--a characterization borrowed from Rincon. See 28 F.3d at 923. The majority fails to suggest any means whatever by which the court could have conducted a better inquiry under the circumstances. Instead it flatly pronounces that the court's conclusion was simply wrong because it would lead to the absurd result of never allowing such expert testimony. 68 I suspect that the Seventh and Eleventh Circuits might take umbrage at the majority's characterizing as absurd, their strong presumptions against expert testimony regarding eyewitness identifications, see Hall, 165 F.3d at 1103; Smith, 122 F.3d at 1357. More importantly, I think it is the majority's conclusion that is simply wrong. The majority fails to explain how this extreme result would follow from the district court's observation. Indeed, if the district court meant flatly to disallow expert testimony concerning eyewitness identifications, it would not have gone out of its way at this hearing to replace sua sponte the pattern jury instruction on eyewitness identifications to which Smithers had already agreed with what it saw as a much stronger instruction in order to alleviate the genuine concerns that Smithers had raised. The majority is resolute in its conviction that the district court failed to apply Daubert, but it fails to explain how that court could have done any better with no more information than Smithers provided. 69 This case presents very few of the narrow circumstances identified by other courts in which this kind of expert testimony can be relevant. See Smith, 156 F.3d 1046, 1052; Harris, 995 F.2d at 535-36. There was no problem of cross-racial identification. The passage of time has been found to be a relevant factor when the recalled event occurred forty years prior, see Krist v. Eli Lilly and Co., 897 F.2d 293, 297-98 (7th Cir. 1990), but not when the time lapse was a routine one of merely six years. See Curry, 977 F.2d at 1052. Here, the time between the robbery and Ms. White's positive identification of Smithers in the photo array was two days; the time between the robbery and the trial was only one and a half years. Moreover, although Smithers alleges that there was an unconscious transference of mistaken identifications among the witnesses, the court explicitly found that all the evidence presented at the hearing appeared to suggest otherwise. 70 Furthermore, the majority identifies its primary basis for finding an abuse of discretion as the court's experiment comment, explaining that [b]asing an evidentiary decision on personal curiosity rather than applicable case law and the rules of evidence is a patent abuse of discretion. The fact that these offhand statements were made is unfortunate. We review them on the cold record, separated them from their context and texture, including the voice inflection and facial expressions of their delivery. But the proceedings described above make it clear that the district court did not base its exclusion of Fulero on the sinister whimsy that the majority imputes to it. The statements were made at the close of the second hearing, after the court had again denied the motion and instead awarded Smithers a strongly worded instruction. The court's comment to Smithers's counsel that she had made an excellent record that I've abused my discretion was not indifference to the law, but an assurance that she haddone well in preserving a record of her objection for appeal. The observation that admitting Fulero's testimony would have been tantamount to the Court declaring the defendant not guilty as a matter of law and that absent the eyewitness testimony I don't think there's enough here to go to the jury correctly describes the severely prejudicial effect that Fulero's testimony likely would have had on the Government's case. Finally, the court's experiment remark, while perhaps inappropriate, was made well after the motion had twice been denied and was the last statement made on the record before Smithers rested his case. It did not form the basis for the court's exclusion of Fulero, nor did it prejudice Smithers in any other way. I do not agree that this single comment can justify the majority's finding of a patent abuse of discretion. 71 The majority ultimately concludes that this case must be remanded for a new trial that, presumably, will include a Daubert test, 7 whatever that may be. Were that the extent of our holding, my difference of opinion with the majority would simply be a disagreement about what Daubert requires and how the district court should have proceeded here. But the majority does not stop there. Instead, it proceeds into a lengthy explanation of what the court might have found had it applied Daubert to the majority's liking. This, in my view, is wholly improper. Not only does this exceed our function as an appellate court, but it is anathema to the law that the majority had theretofore laid out; if the gatekeeping function is truly in the district court's discretion and requires a fact-finding hearing, and the district court in this case has failed to exercise that discretion as utterly as the majority concludes, then surely the record before us is inadequate to permit us to announce what facts about the testimony the court would have discovered in a hearing. Instead, we should follow the lead of our sister circuits which, upon a finding that the district court has not assessed an eyewitness identification expert's relevance in a manner consistent with Rule 702, have remanded the matter without further discussion. See, e.g., Hall, 165 F.3d at 1102; United States v. Amador-Galvan, 9 F.3d 1414, 1417-18 (9th Cir. 1993); Downing, 753 F.2d at 1226. I take some comfort in the fact that the majority's sua sponte application of Daubert and glowing praise for eyewitness identification expert testimony are dicta, since they exceed the actual holding that the court abused its discretion. To the extent, however, that the opinion as a whole is seen as persuasive authority cementing the already-extant impression that our circuit is among the most receptive to this type of testimony, see Murrian, supra, at 392, it does our jurisprudence a disservice. 72