Opinion ID: 1520970
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: The in-court demonstration

Text: At some time after the defendant's first trial, Porterfield's car was sold and adapted for stock-car racing. The windshield, which had been damaged by a bullet, had been replaced; headrests on the front seats had been removed; bloodstains on the dashboard and seat upholstery had been cleaned or had faded after the passage of time. Perhaps most importantly, Detective Pinette did not measure the distance from seat to dashboard until some two weeks before the second trial. Although photographs of the front seat in its original state were available to Pinette, there does not seem to be accurate, verifiable evidence that positions of the dashboard and seat at the time of trial were the same as at the time of the shooting. In addition, the mannequins used in Pinette's demonstration did not purport to replicate the physical characteristics of Porterfield or of the defendant. The persuasive power on juries of in-court demonstrative evidence is widely conceded. See McCormick on Evidence § 212 (2d ed. 1972) (seeing is believing). A trial court should exercise its discretion carefully before permitting such demonstrations because ... even if no essentially emotional response is likely to result, demonstrative evidence may convey an impression of objective reality to the trier. Thus, the courts are frequently sensitive to the objection that the evidence is misleading and zealous to insure that there is no misleading differential between objective things offered at trial and the same or different objective things as they existed at the time of the events or occurrences in litigation. It is clear to us that whatever relevance this demonstration had to prove the defendant's intent or to cast doubt on his credibility, that relevance was greatly outweighed by the highly prejudicial effect of Pinette's rough reconstruction, using techniques of non-verifiable accuracy of events he was not present to see. M.R.Evid. 403. [6] The prejudicial effect of the demonstration was reinforced by Pinette's trial testimony, offered without apparent proper foundation, that he had duplicated the experiment outside of court using live bodies. The State's reconstruction of the occurrence through the alleged expertise of Detective Pinette, cast in the context of a posed in-court demonstration, plus his stated out-of-court demonstration with live models, did not portray the Porterfield automobile in substantially the same condition it was in immediately after the shooting: the bullet-shattered windshield had been removed, the bloodstains in the interior of the car were missing and the distance measurements between the seat and the dashboard were not subject to accurate determination. There was no showing of comparative similarity between the mannequins, or the live subjects used in the demonstrations, and the two persons involved in the altercation in respect to weight, height, physical strength or skill and emotional temperament. Such experimental demonstrative evidence in the eyes of jurors, because of its asserted foundation in scientific principle or technique, carried such an inherent objective impact that it could unduly influence the jury in its findings of the underlying necessary facts at issue, without adequate basic facts to sustain a scientific conclusion, plus the absence of adequate opportunity to the defendant in this case to meet such damaging evidence resting in surmise and conjecture. Cf. Poulin v. Bilodeau, 161 Me. 306, 311, 211 A.2d 547, 550 (1965). It was error for the trial court to permit this demonstration, with its potential for ineradicable prejudice to the defendant's case.