Opinion ID: 2218963
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Frye Hearing in this Case

Text: The Frye hearing in this case was virtually the first in the Nation to consider whether forensic application of DNA analysis had been generally accepted as reliable. While the mere fact that a court is the first to evaluate novel scientific evidence does not mean the evidence is unreliable, it increases the task of the hearing court. If no court opinions, texts, laboratory standards or scholarly articles have been issued on the technique  the types of materials relevant to a determination of general acceptability ( Matter of Lahey v Kelly , 71 N.Y.2d 135, 144; People v Middleton , 54 N.Y.2d 42, 50, supra; People v Leone , 25 N.Y.2d 511, 516-517; People v Magri , 3 N.Y.2d 562)  the court may, as it did here, take the testimony of expert witnesses. [4] The People offered detailed testimony concerning the RFLP procedure  an accepted procedure for separating strands of DNA and locating their unique fragments  which had been in use for research and diagnostic purposes long before its forensic application was proposed. Dr. Kenneth Kidd and Dr. Richard Roberts, experts in molecular biology and population genetics, and Dr. Sandra Nierzwicki-Bauer, a molecular biologist specializing in the study of blue-green algae, vouched on behalf of the People for the reliability of RFLP procedure. None of these witnesses, however, was expert in forensic DNA analysis. In defining the relevant scientific field, the court must seek to comply with the Frye objective of containing a consensus of the scientific community. If the field is too narrowly defined, the judgment of the scientific community will devolve into the opinion of a few experts. The field must still include scientists who would be expected to be familiar with the particular use of the evidence at issue, however, whether through actual or theoretical research (Giannelli, The Admissibility of Novel Scientific Evidence: Frye v. United States, a Half-Century Later , 80 Colum L Rev 1197, 1209-1210). Focusing on DNA profiling in the forensic setting is crucial because DNA fingerprinting is far more technically demanding than DNA diagnostics, particularly in the art of declaring a match between samples (Lander, DNA Fingerprinting on Trial , 339 Nature 501). Traditional RFLP procedure was developed to enable scientists to identify the DNA structure contained within a particular sample, and had been in use for more than a decade at the time of this hearing. Its forensic application  comparison of DNA between two or more samples, one from an unknown source  is far more susceptible to error (id.) . Techniques must be adapted to the special requirements of crime scene samples, which are subject to contamination that can confuse results. Moreover, steps seven and eight  the steps unique to forensic analysis of DNA  were truly novel. The theoretical use of DNA profiling as a method for identifying perpetrators of crimes was first posited in 1985 in a series of articles by British researchers (Jeffreys, Wilson and Thein, Hypervariable Minisatellite Regions in Human DNA , 314 Nature 67-69; Jeffreys, Wilson and Thein, Individual-Specific Fingerprints of Human DNA , 316 Nature 76; Gill, Jeffreys and Werrett, Forensic Application of DNA `Fingerprints' , 318 Nature 577). By 1988, the only practitioners of the technique in this country were the commercial laboratories Cellmark (founded by Dr. Jeffreys), Cetus and Lifecodes, which began forensic analysis just one year before the hearing in this case. Little peer review of their techniques had taken place by 1988 because these enterprises endeavored to keep their methods secret to protect their proprietary interests. According to the defense witness Dr. Neville Colman, the procedures were still so new that there had not yet been efforts in the field to validate by replication the methods employed at Lifecodes; there had been neither refutation nor support of the technique in the professional literature. [5] The point of noting controversy about the reliability of the forensic technique is not for our Court to determine whether the method was or was not reliable in 1988, but whether there was consensus in the scientific community as to its reliability. The Frye test emphasizes counting scientists' votes, rather than on verifying the soundness of a scientific conclusion. ( Jones v United States , 548 A2d 35, 42 [DC Ct App]; accord , State v Montalbo , 73 Haw 130, 828 P2d 1274, 1279.) Where controversy rages, a court may conclude that no consensus has been reached. Here, however, the problem was more subtle: absence of controversy reflected not the endorsement perceived by our colleagues, but the prematurity of admitting this evidence. Insufficient time had passed for competing points of view to emerge. [6] The inquiry into forensic analysis of DNA in this case also demonstrates the pitfalls of self-validation by a small group (Hoeffel, The Dark Side of DNA Profiling: Unreliable Scientific Evidence Meets the Criminal Defendant , 42 Stan L Rev 465, 502, citing Black, A Unified Theory of Scientific Evidence , 56 Fordham L Rev 595, 625). Before bringing novel evidence to court, proponents of new techniques must subject their methods to the scrutiny of fellow scientists, unimpeded by commercial concerns (Thompson, Evaluating the Admissibility of New Genetic Identification Tests: Lessons From the DNA War , 84 Crim L & Criminology 22, 95). A Frye court should be particularly cautious when  as here  the supporting research is conducted by someone with a professional or commercial interest in the technique (Giannelli, The Admissibility of Novel Scientific Evidence: Frye v. United States, a Half-Century Later , 80 Colum L Rev 1197, 1213). DNA forensic analysis was developed in commercial laboratories under conditions of secrecy, preventing emergence of independent views. No independent academic or governmental laboratories were publishing studies concerning forensic use of DNA profiling. The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not consider use of the technique until 1989. Because no other facilities were apparently conducting research in the field, the commercial laboratory's unchallenged endorsement of the reliability of its own techniques was accepted by the hearing court as sufficient to represent acceptance of the technique by scientists generally. The sole forensic witness at the hearing in this case was Dr. Michael Baird, Director of Forensics at Lifecodes laboratory, where the samples were to be analyzed. While he assured the court of the reliability of the forensic application of DNA, virtually the sole publications on forensic use of DNA were his own or those of Dr. Jeffreys, the founder of Cellmark, one of Lifecodes' competitors. Nor had the forensic procedure been subjected to thorough peer review. The absence of agreed-upon standards and laboratory protocol for the conduct of a technique can also serve to establish that the technique has not yet gained general acceptance ( People v Leone , 25 N.Y.2d 511, supra ). Here, no laboratory conducting DNA analysis had been accredited for that purpose. As early as 1984, the Legislature set standards, in the Family Court Act, for admissibility of blood genetic marker tests. Analysis of DNA samples considered on the question of paternity  where laboratories must also declare that two samples match  must be shown to have been performed in accordance with proper procedures by a laboratory authorized by the Commissioner of Health to conduct such tests (Family Ct Act §§ 418, 532). As of July 1992, however, no laboratory, including Lifecodes, had yet been authorized by the Commissioner of Health to conduct DNA testing ( Matter of S.L.B. v K.A. , 155 Misc 2d 458, 459). The defense introduced testimony from Dr. Anne Willey of the Department of Health establishing that no licensing or certification standards governing DNA profiling evidence had yet been developed in New York State, although discussions were ongoing. Lifecodes was licensed only to conduct genetic tests of amniotic fluid. As defendant pointed out to the hearing court, the evidence proffered against him to prove murder would not have been admissible in this State on the question of paternity. The opinions of two scientists, both with commercial interests in the work under consideration and both the primary developers and proponents of the technique, were insufficient to establish general acceptance in the scientific field ( People v Leone , 25 N.Y.2d 511, 514, supra ). The People's effort to gain a consensus by having their own witnesses peer review the relevant studies in time to return to court with supporting testimony was hardly an appropriate substitute for the thoughtful exchange of ideas in an unbiased scientific community envisioned by Frye . Our colleagues' characterization of a dearth of publications on this novel technique as the equivalent of unanimous endorsement of its reliability ignores the plain reality that this technique was not yet being discussed and tested in the scientific community. [7] The hearing court also erred in failing to scrutinize the seventh and eighth steps of forensic DNA analysis pursuant to Frye standards. Our colleagues obscure this shortcoming by focusing on the wealth of evidence establishing the reliability of the first six steps of forensic analysis (the RFLP procedure)  a question that was not even disputed at the hearing. It is the absence of evidence concerning accepted standards for steps seven and eight that compels me to conclude admission of this evidence was error. It is the declaration of a match between two samples of DNA, depicted on two separate autorads, that distinguishes forensic use of DNA from traditional, research-based application of RFLP procedure. The only evidence offered on this point was, again, the testimony of Dr. Michael Baird, who testified as to how a Lifecodes technician would visually compare the bands on two autorads to determine if they were the same. During the testimony of Dr. Borowsky, the court had the following exchange with the District Attorney: Let me ask you this. Let's just keep on this field. Is there some person who looks at the autorad, gentlemen, and says `All right, this is included, this one is not included?' or is the autorad read by computer or some kind of machine? DISTRICT ATTORNEY: It's read by a person. THE COURT: It's read by a person? DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Yes. THE COURT: All right. And a person with what expertise? DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Well, Dr. Balasz from Lifecodes, who's a Ph.D., he has read the auto[rads]. The People presented no evidence as to whether this was the procedure generally accepted as reliable in determining whether two DNA samples match beyond Dr. Baird's broad assertion that it was. Given the testimony from Dr. Borowsky indicating that autorad readings could lead to highly subjective results, it cannot be said that the People met their burden of clearly establishing that there were generally accepted procedures for reading autorads in the scientific community. Moreover, we can take note that the visual matching technique was rejected as unreliable once it came to the attention of neutral peers in the scientific community (National Research Council, DNA Technology in Forensic Science [NRC Report] § 2.3.5). [8] We now know that visual matches must be confirmed by a computerized measurement of the apparently matching bands. Only if these bands fall within certain defined parameters, called a match window, will a match be declared (Attorney-General's amicus brief, at 20). Moreover, band appearance and position may be altered by testing conditions, environmental factors or sample contamination, compelling scientists to employ a wide latitude of acceptance to account for discrepancies between prints and to permit declaration of a match even where bands are not identical. This creates a danger that DNA prints of different individuals will be mistakenly declared to match, and no formal standards existed for declaring a match in 1988 (Thompson and Ford, DNA Typing: Acceptance and Weight of the New Genetic Identification Techniques , 75 Va L Rev 45, 87-89 [1989]). The People's failure to adduce evidence on the matching standards was pointed out by the defense at the hearing. In the course of examining Lifecodes' methods for assessing the statistical significance of a match, the defense witness Dr. Richard Borowsky, a population geneticist, repeatedly questioned the criteria employed by Lifecodes for determining that two autorads matched. Defense counsel emphasized that the way they read autorads raises issues relevant to the reliability of the testing and that a negative result may be just a matter of interpretation. Dr. Borowsky specifically cautioned that the probability of error in evaluating the frequency with which a particular gene will appear on an autorad band has not been evaluated by the scientific community, and declared that interpretation is as much as part of the print test as the molecular biology. Our colleagues' conclusion that the reliability of the procedures employed in the instant case had been satisfactorily established overlooks that the samples had not been tested at the time of the Frye hearing, and the autoradiographs never examined prior to their admission at trial. Establishing a proper foundation requires at a minimum a determination that the autoradiographs were of a quality susceptible to interpretation ( People v Castro , 144 Misc 2d 956, 967, 973-979), an inquiry that was here foreclosed by the court's erroneous determination in its Frye decision that all questions as to how a sample was tested go to weight, not admissibility. Defendant also challenged the reliability of step eight, application of statistical methods to determine the significance of a match. In its written decision, the court summarized what it saw as part of [t]he defense attack: that Lifecodes' population studies are inadequate to establish a claimed power of identity for its results under the laws of population genetics (140 Misc 2d, at 317). Dr. Borowsky sought to evaluate independently the autorads which comprised the population genetics database, warning that the absence of standards in the field led to subjective results. Step eight is an integral part of DNA forensic analysis. Indeed, evidence of a match is virtually meaningless without resort to the statistical interpretation; population genetics is arguably the most crucial step of the analysis. It is the area of greatest controversy among the experts. [9] Whether the statistical technique employed by the laboratory meets the standards in the field and is capable of producing reliable results goes directly to admissibility. The hearing court erroneously characterized these concerns as affecting only the weight of the population genetics evidence. We therefore conclude that the court erred in holding that DNA forensic analysis was generally accepted as reliable in 1988.