Opinion ID: 4680148
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Eyewitness Identification Expert Testimony

Text: Appellants next argue that the trial court erroneously excluded their eyewitness identification expert. Before the trial began, appellants sought to 20 introduce testimony from Dr. Steven Penrod, a psychology professor who specializes in eyewitness identification reliability issues. The trial court precluded defense counsel from calling their expert because “[t]he report [was] untimely, and the basis of the report [attached to the expert notice] is tenuous at best.” We stayed the appeal and remanded the record to the trial court so that it could conduct a Dyas 3 hearing regarding the admissibility of appellants’ proffered expert testimony. Following the Dyas hearing, where the trial court heard testimony from both appellants’ and the government’s expert witnesses, the trial court denied appellants’ motion to admit their expert testimony. Appellants challenge the trial court’s ruling in this appeal.
We review a trial court’s decision on the admissibility of expert testimony for abuse of discretion. See Girardot v. United States, 92 A.3d 1107, 1109 (D.C. 2014) (internal quotations omitted). When we remanded in 2015 for a decision on whether appellants’ expert witness would be allowed to testify, Dyas still governed 3 Dyas v. United States, 376 A.2d 827 (D.C. 1977). Dyas adopted and expanded upon the Frye standard for admission of expert testimony. See Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (Ct. App. D.C. 1923). 21 the admissibility of expert testimony. Under Dyas, expert testimony was admissible if: (1) the subject matter [is] so distinctively related to some science, profession, business or occupation as to be beyond the ken of the average layman; (2) the witness [has] sufficient skill, knowledge, or experience in that field or calling as to make it appear that his opinion or inference will probably aid the trier in his search for truth; and (3) expert testimony is inadmissible if the state of the pertinent art or scientific knowledge does not permit a reasonable opinion to be asserted even by an expert. Dyas, 376 A.2d at 832 (internal quotations omitted). However, in 2016 we replaced the Dyas standard with the Federal Rule of Evidence 702/Daubert standard. See Motorola Inc. v. Murray, 147 A.3d 751, 752 (D.C. 2016) (en banc) (adopting the federal standards on admissibility of expert testimony laid out in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993)). Rather than the three-factor test laid out in Dyas, we now review the admissibility of expert testimony under the following standard: A witness who is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise if: (a) the expert’s scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue; (b) the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data; (c) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and (d) the expert has 22 reliably applied the principles and methods to the facts of the case. Fed. R. Evid. 702; see also Motorola, 147 A.3d at 757 (“We conclude that Rule 702, with its expanded focus on whether reliable principles and methods have been reliably applied, states a rule that is preferable to the Dyas/Frye test.”). Following our remand, the trial court held a hearing and issued its order in 2017, after our decision in Motorola. In its decision, the trial court declined to admit the expert testimony based on the Dyas factors, rather than the Rule 702/Daubert standard we adopted in Motorola. The question of whether Rule 702 applied retroactively to cases that had already been tried but were not yet final on direct appeal was left open in Motorola, see, 147 A.3d at 759, but we have since held that “the standards adopted for the admission of expert testimony in Motorola apply to all cases . . . that are still ‘pending on direct review or not yet final.’” Williams v. United States, 210 A.3d 734, 743 (D.C. 2019) (citing Davis v. Moore, 772 A.2d 204, 226 (D.C. 2001) (en banc)). Because the incorrect standard was applied by the trial court, we review the trial court’s decision under harmless error standard. See Carrell, 165 A.3d at 327 (“‘On the hearing of any appeal in any case, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals shall give judgment after an examination of the record without regard to errors or defects which do not affect the substantial rights of the parties.’”) (quoting D.C. Code § 11-721 (e)). “To 23 find harmless error, this court must be satisfied ‘with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error.’” Smith v. United States, 666 A.2d 1216, 1225 (D.C. 1995) (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 765 (1946)). We conclude that the trial court’s error in applying the Dyas factors was harmless because the record makes it clear that the trial court’s decision to exclude the expert testimony would have been the same if it applied the correct standard. We are satisfied that, because Dr. Penrod’s testimony would not “help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue,” Fed. R. Evid. 702(a), the trial court’s decision to exclude his testimony was consistent with the Rule 702/Motorola standard. The trial court excluded the expert testimony in part because Mr. Walls had seen appellant Parker “around the neighborhood more than ten times” and appellant Jenkins “[p]retty much every day,” which allowed the trial court to conclude the witness and appellants were “not strangers to each other.” Because Dr. Penrod’s testimony centered on cases “where the person being identified was not well known” to the witness, and the court determined that there was some level of familiarity between the witness and appellants, it concluded that “the proffered expert testimony would not aid the jury in any meaningful way.” 24 We agree with Dr. Penrod that familiarity exists on a spectrum. Thus, this case is not the situation he describes where “[i]f mom is assaulting me, mom is so well learned I should be able to recognize her in less than a second,” which is the level of familiarity where the factors affecting the reliability of identifications would not come into play. But this is also not a case where, as Dr. Penrod implied, Mr. Walls was identifying “somebody that [he’d] seen [for] a very brief period of time at some prior occasion.” Mr. Walls’ familiarity with appellants Jenkins and Parker fell somewhere in between those two poles, which is why the trial court determined that Dr. Penrod’s testimony, focused on stranger identifications, would ultimately be unhelpful to the jury. 4 Application of the Dyas standard rather than the Rule 702/Motorola standard does not change the fact that the trial court has discretion to make that determination. See, e.g., Hager v. United States, 856 A.2d 1143, 1148-49 (D.C. 2004), amended in part on other grounds, 861 A.2d 601 (D.C. 2004), cert. denied, 547 U.S. 1035 (2006) (finding the trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding expert testimony on eyewitness identifications because “the studies on which [the expert witness] would have relied concern the 4 This conclusion is aided by the government’s expert, who testified that the findings from stranger identification research should not be applied to situations where the witness has a prior acquaintance with the subject of the identification because those situations are “qualitatively different.” 25 reliability of a stranger identification, not an identification of a person known to the witness, as in this case . . . [thus], it is . . . doubtful that [the expert’s] testimony would have been helpful to the jury”); see also United States v. Langan, 263 F.3d 613, 623 (6th Cir. 2001) (holding expert testimony on eyewitness identifications properly excluded under Rule 702 and Daubert because it did not “‘fit’ the eyewitness identification in this case”); State v. Guilbert, 49 A.3d 705, 736-37 (Conn. 2012) (holding expert testimony properly excluded because the “testimony was not applicable to the specific facts of this case and would not have been helpful to the jury because most of the eyewitnesses knew the defendant and were therefore much less likely to render a mistaken identification”); People v. Abney, 918 N.E.2d 486, 496 (N.Y. 2009) (upholding trial court’s exclusion of defendant’s expert witness testimony on identifications in part because “defendant was not a stranger to either [witness]”); State v. Clopten, 223 P.3d 1103, 1113 (Utah 2009) (“If the eyewitness is identifying someone with whom he or she has been acquainted over a substantial period of time . . . then expert testimony is not likely to assist the jury in evaluating the accuracy of a witness’s testimony.”). Dr. Penrod’s testimony does not meet the first factor in the Rule 702 test for admitting expert witness testimony because it would not “help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue,” and therefore the trial court’s error in applying the Dyas factors was harmless. Fed. R. Evid. 702(a). 26
Even assuming Dr. Penrod’s testimony would have met all of Rule 702’s requirements and been otherwise admissible, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by keeping out the testimony under Rule 403. See Johnson v. United States, 683 A.2d 1087, 1098-99 (D.C. 1996) (en banc) (adopting probative value versus prejudicial effect balancing test of Fed. R. Evid. 403). Otherwise admissible expert testimony may still be excluded by a trial court if “its probative value is substantially outweighed by . . . unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, [or] misleading the jury . . . .” Motorola, 147 A.3d at 754 (quoting Fed. R. Evid. 403); see also Ibn-Tamas v. United States, 407 A.2d 626, 632 (D.C. 1979) (holding the trial court must still apply the 403 balancing test after determining the expert testimony’s admissibility). We have recognized that “[e]xpert evidence can be both powerful and quite misleading because of the difficulty in evaluating it.” Motorola, 147 A.3d at 755 (quoting Daubert, 509 U.S. at 595). Therefore, because of this risk and as part of the trial court’s gatekeeping function, “the judge in weighing possible prejudice against probative force under Rule 403 of the present rules exercises more control over experts than over lay witnesses.” Id. We 27 evaluate the trial court’s decision on the probative versus prejudicial nature of the expert testimony for abuse of discretion. Motorola, 147 A.3d at 755. Here, the trial court found that “the testimony proffered by the defendant would be more prejudicial than probative,” and given that the case “does not involve strangers,” the testimony would also be “distracting or confusing [to] the jury.” Minor v. United States, 57 A.3d 406, 419 n.6 (D.C. 2012). While the trial court incorrectly addressed the 403 balancing test as part of the second prong of Dyas rather than as a separate test of admissibility, we find no prejudice in the trial court’s conclusion that Dr. Penrod’s testimony should be excluded under Rule 403. As noted above, the thrust of Dr. Penrod’s testimony focused on eyewitness identifications involving strangers. His testimony therefore had limited probative value in this factual situation, where Mr. Walls was familiar with both appellants, and instead his testimony posed a substantial risk of confusing the issue and misleading the jury. Under such circumstances, the trial court properly exercised its gatekeeping function. See Heath v. United States, 26 A.3d 266, 282 (D.C. 2011) (probative value of excluded expert testimony was slight where witness knew defendant, and because expert’s opinion rested on research concerning stranger identifications, she “simply had too little to say [to the jury] about the 28 identifications [her testimony] was meant to undercut”); see also United States v. Bartlett, 567 F.3d 901, 906-07 (7th Cir. 2009) (no abuse of discretion under Rule 403 to exclude expert witness testimony where four out of six witnesses knew defendant well); State v. Williams, 119 A.3d 1194, 1204-08 (Conn. 2015) (no abuse of discretion in excluding expert testimony where witness knew robber as a “regular” customer). Ultimately, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the testimony of appellants’ expert under Rule 403.