Opinion ID: 2319967
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Request for a Frye Hearing

Text: Just prior to trial, in January of 2008, appellant's counsel orally requested leave to adopt a motion which former co-defendant Leaks had filed in September of 2006 seeking a pretrial hearing on the admissibility of firearms identification evidence. Judge Dixon allowed the defense to adopt, summarize, and argue the motion. Appellant's counsel urged the court to conduct a Frye hearing, [2] asserting that pattern matching is not generally accepted within the scientific community. Judge Dixon advised, I'm familiar with that type of testimony, because we have heard it in other cases. What is the novelty of this issue[?] Counsel argued that there is: a lack of objective criteria by which a firearms examiner makes his conclusions; no peer review of their work; no proficiency testing; and no calculation of error rates[.] By contrast, the prosecutor argued that pattern matching is the generally accepted practice and, therefore, presumptively reliable. Judge Dixon agreed that the evidence was an accepted type of analysis that has been admitted in courtroom after courtroom[,] and he did not find any need to conduct any type of pretrial hearing on [its] admissibility[.] Jones contends that the trial court erred in denying this request for a Frye hearing. [3]
In the District of Columbia, before expert testimony about a new scientific principle [may] be admitted, the testing methodology must have become `sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs.' Williams v. District of Columbia, 558 A.2d 344, 346 (D.C.1989) (quoting Frye, 54 App.D.C. at 47, 293 F. at 1014). The issue is consensus versus controversy over a particular technique, not its validity. United States v. Jenkins, 887 A.2d 1013, 1022 (D.C.2005) (citing United States v. Porter, 618 A.2d 629, 633 (D.C.1992)). Moreover, general acceptance does not require unanimous approval. Porter, 618 A.2d at 634. Once a technique has gained such general acceptance, we will accept it as presumptively reliable and thus generally admissible into evidence. The party opposing the evidence, of course, may challenge the weight the jury ought to give it. Jones v. United States, 548 A.2d 35, 39 (D.C.1988). Although we do not doubt that a technique that has previously been recognized in court as generally accepted may lose that wide acceptance, we conclude that appellant has not shown that to be the case with respect to pattern matching as a way of identifying firearms. [4]
Here, the trial court properly admitted the expert testimony without conducting a Frye hearing. Frye only applies to a novel scientific test or a unique controversial methodology or technique. Drevenak v. Abendschein, 773 A.2d 396, 418 (D.C.2001); see Cook v. Edgewood Mgmt. Corp., 825 A.2d 939, 950-51 (D.C. 2003) ( Frye [] is inapplicable and there is no burden `to demonstrate ... [that the cobalt test] has been generally accepted in the relevant scientific community' because testimony of two investigators highlights the fact that the MPD had used the cobalt test for many years and nothing suggested it was a novel test, or new scientific technique, or unique controversial methodology[.]) (quoting Porter, 618 A.2d at 633). Pattern matching is not new, and courts in this jurisdiction have long been admitting firearms identifications based on this method. [5] Even Leaks's motion conceded that firearm and toolmark identification evidence has generally historically been accepted in various courts across the country. Indeed, Leaks (and appellant) cited no case that had excluded such evidence. Appellant attempts to avoid this problem by asserting that, had the trial court conducted a Frye hearing, the defense could have demonstrated that the challenged method was no longer generally accepted in the scientific community. This assertion is simply not true; comparison matching remains widely accepted and appellant misplaces his reliance upon a law review article [6] to suggest that pattern matching is no longer generally accepted within the relevant scientific community. Even the courts that have held pretrial hearings on the admissibility of firearms identification evidence, and considered the studies and articles cited by Jones on appeal (and Leaks below), [7] have not excluded this type of proof. Instead, the most these courts have done is to impose guidelines for the presentation of such evidence. [8] In sum, nothing presented to the trial court (or to us) suggests that the pattern matching methodology is no longer generally accepted, [9] and there was no need for Judge Dixon to expend scarce judicial resources on a Frye hearing. [10] See Jones, 548 A.2d at 40, 42 (General acceptance means just that; the answer cannot vary from case to case.... [So in evaluating general acceptance,] judicial notice of court opinions and scientific literature is appropriate and, on occasion, even necessary.).