Opinion ID: 1520970
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Detective Pinette's testimony regarding the evidence of blood spattering

Text: A separate issue, but one intertwined with the issue raised by the in-court demonstration, arises out of Detective Pinette's testimony regarding the blood spatters in Porterfield's car. Detective Pinette had based his opinion regarding the sequence of shots and sequential positions of Porterfield and the defendant in part on his observations of blood spatters in the car. Defense counsel objected on the ground that Pinette had not been properly qualified as an expert. Pinette testified before the jury that he had received special training in blood spatters [a three-week course] in New York State under Professor Herbert MacDonald, and the State argued out of the presence of the jury that Pinette had merely analyzed all the information he had, using the logic and expertise of a crime scene reconstruction. However, the presiding justice conducted no voir-dire to determine the extent of Pinette's qualifications or the state of the science in respect thereto, nor did he ever formally rule on whether Pinette was offering lay or expert opinions. It seems clear that opinions based on observations of blood spatters and what they show regarding the sequence and directions of gunshots are matters encompassed by Maine Rule of Evidence 702. When a party offers the testimony of a witness as that of an expert, the presiding justice must exercise his discretion to make two determinations: first, whether testimony on the subject matter calls for specialized knowledge that would assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence and second, whether the witness is qualified to give the opinion sought. M.R. Evid. 104(a), 401, 702; R. Field and P. Murray, Maine Evidence § 702.1 (1976). See State v. Boutilier, Me., 426 A.2d 876, 878 (1981); Parker v. Hohman, Me., 250 A.2d 698, 702 (1969). The proffered testimony is also subject to the general relevance requirements of Maine Rules of Evidence 401 and 402 and, even if relevant, may be excluded if its probative value would be outweighed by the countervailing considerations of Rule 403. See State v. Boutilier, supra ; State v. Williams, Me., 388 A.2d 500, 504 (1978); see also R. Field and P. Murray, Maine Evidence, supra, at §§ 704.1, 403.1. One of the factors the presiding justice should consider in determining whether proffered testimony will be relevant and helpful to the factfinder is whether the scientific matters involved in the testimony have been generally accepted or conform to a generally accepted scientific theory. State v. Williams, supra, 388 A.2d at 504. General scientific acceptance is not a sine qua non of a proposed method of determining facts; however, in order to be admissible the proffered expert testimony must be demonstrated to have sufficient reliability to satisfy the evidentiary requirements of relevance and helpfulness, and of avoidance of prejudice to the defendant or confusion of the factfinder. M.R.Evid. 402, 702 and 403; see State v. Boutilier, supra, 426 A.2d at 879. We conclude that, because Officer Pinette's opinion about what the blood spattering in the car showed regarding the relative positions of the defendant and the victim at the time of the shooting was the kind of evidence clearly encompassed by Rule 702, it was error for the presiding justice to fail to consider and rule upon the above-enumerated factors. We further conclude that this was not a harmless error within the meaning of Maine Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(a). While Detective Pinette's testimony regarding his short three-week training course at blood-spatter school alone might have called into question his qualifications to give the opinion sought by the State, see State v. Boutilier, supra , even more serious questions about the relevance, helpfulness, and potential prejudicial effect of Pinette's proffered opinion were raised by the prior testimony of the pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Porterfield and by defense counsel's argument against the admissibility of Pinette's opinion. While Pinette deduced, based on the autopsy information and the pattern of blood spattering in the car, that the three shots fired by the defendant must have come in a certain order, the autopsy pathologist himself was unable to assign a sequence to the wounds. Moreover, defense counsel informed the presiding justice in the absence of the jury that the pathologist had told him that several variables might affect blood velocity and, therefore, the pattern of blood spatters: he also advised the court that there's no literature on the subject [of using blood spattering as a means of assigning a sequence to gunshots]. While defense counsel's argument was not evidence, it should have alerted the presiding justice to the fact that Pinette's methods may have lacked sufficient scientific reliability to provide the basis for expert opinion testimony. Cf. State v. Boutilier, supra ; State v. Williams, supra ; Parker v. Hohman, supra . Further inquiry into the state of this science was in order; failure to make such an inquiry was error. Furthermore, any relevance Detective Pinette's opinion may have had to prove the sequential order of the defendant's use of deadly force in his encounter with Porterfield was greatly outweighed by the prejudicial possibility that the jury was persuaded to disbelieve the defendant's defense on the basis of scientific evidence of doubtful reliability. M.R.Evid. 702, 401, 402, 403; Cf. State v. Boutilier, supra . The combination of Detective Pinette's in-court demonstration of the shooting incident and his expert opinion testimony regarding the positions of the bodies when each shot was fired tainted the trial with reversible error.