Opinion ID: 202406
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Testimony empirically disproved

Text: 26 On several points, Kominsky gave testimony that was later shown to be simply wrong. 27
28 Alford's car had automatic seatbelts, a point obviously pertinent to Henderson's appeal. Alford testified that the car had automatic seatbelts. The district court confirmed, after taking a view of the car, that [t]he automobile in which Mr. Henderson was riding on the evening in question does, as Ms. Alford testified, have an automatic seat belt for the front seat passenger. Kominsky, however, testified repeatedly and with certainty that the car had non-automatic seatbelts. 29 Not surprisingly, the district court probed this seatbelt issue carefully. At the first suppression hearing, the court questioned Kominsky about the seatbelt itself. 3 The district court took a view of Alford's car the next day. These were its findings: 30 The automobile in which Mr. Henderson was riding on the evening in question does, as Ms. Alford testified, have an automatic seat belt for the front seat passenger. It's a belt that attaches to the frame and, when connected, pushes away from the seat toward the windshield when the door, passenger side door, is open. If a passenger got in and sat down and closed the door, the seatbelt would automatically come back and go diagonally across his chest from his right shoulder to his left waist. There is also a lap belt that needs to be connected manually. The seat belts are black or dark gray. 31 The automatic belt can be disconnected from the door frame and will then roll down into the left-hand side of the passenger seat by the place that the lap belt, I believe, connects or starts from. 32 The district court's observations contradicted Kominsky's testimony in two important ways. First, Kominsky simply was wrong about there being a non-automatic-type seatbelt in Alford's car. Second — and even more important — Kominsky's emphatic testimony about seeing Henderson's seat belt [] on the side of the door frame, could not have been true. If the seatbelt had been connected, it would have been attached to the frame of the car, as described by the court. If it were disconnected, it would have rolled down into the left hand side of the passenger seat, also as described by the court. It was a physical impossibility for the strap to be in the position Kominsky described. As the district court itself immediately recognized: 33 I think [Kominsky] testified, and I'll have to refresh my recollection — that it wasn't an automatic seat belt. He remembered it hanging there after Mr. Henderson got out of the car. And whether it was connected or disconnected, it wouldn't have been hanging in the place that a non-automatic seatbelt hangs, in my experience. It either would have been pushed forward if it was connected or it would have been down by the left-hand waist if it was disconnected. 34 The government argues that Kominsky's testimony was not inaccurate because Alford's car had manual lap belts in addition to automatic seatbelts. This argument is unpersuasive because it parses Kominsky's testimony too finely. While Kominsky did testify that Henderson was not wearing a seatbelt across his lap, he also testified emphatically that Henderson did not have a seat belt going diagonally across his chest. Kominsky never testified that he would give a seatbelt citation to someone wearing a shoulder belt but not a lap belt. 35
36 Kominsky testified at the first suppression hearing that he had issued over a hundred seatbelt citations just in this last year. To the government, and conceivably to the district court, this was important testimony. The government placed great emphasis on the frequency of Kominsky's seatbelt citations as an explanation for the inaccuracy of his recollection about Alford's car. In light of further questioning, however, neither Kominsky's tabulation nor the government's excuse held up. Asked the same question at trial, Kominsky said that he averaged 25 citations, admitted the inconsistency, and said that he had misunderstood the question how many seat belt violations have you written in the last year? 37 As Henderson points out, the record plainly belies Kominsky's statement — and the government's argument on appeal — that he misunderstood the question before stating that he issued 100 seatbelt citations a year. In response to follow-up questions at the first suppression hearing, Kominsky reiterated that he had written 100 seatbelt citations just in the last year, and that he issued a seatbelt citation every three days. There was no confusion by Kominsky. 38 At the second suppression hearing, defense counsel again impeached Kominsky on this point — with documentary evidence that Kominsky had averaged only fifteen seatbelt citations per year. Kominsky again had an excuse: he had issued more citations but they were missing from computer records because of his bad handwriting. 39
40 Kominsky testified that Henderson was wearing a dark-colored shirt on the night of the arrest. However, documentary evidence — the inventory list from the jail where Henderson would spend the night — proved that Henderson was wearing a white shirt. The government argues that the issue is immaterial and points out that Kominsky expressed no certainty when testifying about Henderson's attire. Still, the inaccuracy about the shirt, like the inaccuracy about the automatic seatbelts and the number of seatbelt citations he had written, provides a further ground for questioning Kominsky's credibility. 41