Opinion ID: 1920515
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Frye Standard.

Text: The traditional test for determining the admissibility of emerging scientific techniques is the so-called Frye test, named for Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C.Cir.1923). In Frye, the court said: Just when a scientific principle or discovery crosses the line between the experimental and demonstrable stages is difficult to define. Somewhere in this twilight zone the evidential force of the principle must be recognized, and while courts will go a long way in admitting expert testimony deduced from a well-recognized scientific principle or discovery, the thing from which the deduction is made must be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs. Id. at 1014. We have rephrased the Frye standard to require that experts in the field generally agree that the evidence is reliable and trustworthy. See State v. Mack, 292 N.W.2d 764, 768 (Minn.1980). The state urges rejection of the Frye standard and adoption of an approach that would treat novel scientific evidence like other expert opinion evidence, admitting it if: a) it assists the trier of fact and there is a reasonable basis for it, Minn.R.Evid. 702 and 703; b) it is relevant under rules 401 and 402; and c) the probative value is not outweighed by its potential for unfair prejudice, rule 403. [1] See C. McCormick, McCormick on Evidence § 203, at 607-08 (3d ed. 1984). To be admissible, relevant and reliable emerging scientific evidence need not necessarily have first passed muster within its appropriate scientific field, as required by Frye 's general acceptance prong. See, e.g., State v. Hall, 297 N.W.2d 80, 85 (Iowa 1980), cert. denied, 450 U.S. 927, 101 S.Ct. 1384, 67 L.Ed.2d 359 (1981). Without this safeguard, we believe an undesired element of subjectivity is possible in evidentiary rulings under the relevancy approach. The Frye standard, on the other hand, facilitates more objective and uniform rulings. While the relevancy approach has been adopted by several jurisdictions, see, e.g., United States v. Downing, 753 F.2d 1224, 1229-32 (3d Cir.1985); Andrews v. State, 533 So.2d 841, 846-47 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 1988), cert. denied, 542 So.2d 1332 (Fla. 1989); Hall, 297 N.W.2d at 84-85, the Frye standard remains the majority rule. Indeed, we have long applied Frye in determining whether scientific evidence is admissible. See, e.g., State v. Anderson, 379 N.W.2d 70, 79 (Minn.1985) (graphological personality assessment), cert. denied, 476 U.S. 1141, 106 S.Ct. 2248, 90 L.Ed.2d 694 (1986); Mack, 292 N.W.2d at 768 (hypnotically induced testimony); State v. Kolander, 236 Minn. 209, 220, 52 N.W.2d 458, 464 (1952) (lie detector tests). Unconvinced by the state of the need for or the wisdom of overruling these prior decisions, we reaffirm that the admissibility of novel scientific evidence is determined by application of the Frye standard, and we answer the first certified question accordingly. [2]