Opinion ID: 1910611
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: expert testimony about battered women

Text: Appellant claims the trial court erred in excluding the testimony of Dr. Lenore Walker, a clinical psychologist, proffered as a defense expert on the subject of battered women. Specifically, the defense proffered Dr. Walker for two purposes: to describe the phenomenon of wife battering, and to give her opinion of the extent to which appellant's personality and behavior corresponded to those of 110 battered women Dr. Walker had studied. The defense claimed the testimony was relevant because it would help the jury appraise the credibility of appellant's contention that she had perceived herself in such imminent danger from her husband that she shot him in self-defense. The trial court refused to permit this expert testimony on three grounds. First, it would go [] beyond those [prior violent] acts which a jury is entitled to hear about, sift, and try to understand the circumstances under which they arose, and draw conclusions therefrom. Second, it would invade[] the province of the jury, who are the sole judges of the facts and triers of the credibility of the witnesses, including the defendant. Third, Dr. Walker, of necessity, concludes that the decedent was a batterer. And that is not being tried in this case. It is the defendant who is on trial. Our scope of review on this issue is narrow, for the `trial judge has broad discretion in the matter of the admission or exclusion of expert evidence, and his action is to be sustained unless manifestly erroneous.' Douglas v. United States, D.C.App., 386 A.2d 289, 295 (1978), (quoting Salem v. United States Lines Co., 370 U.S. 31, 35, 82 S.Ct. 1119, 8 L.Ed.2d 313 (1962)). In exercising its discretion, the trial court must be guided by the principles that the `defense should be free to introduce appropriate expert testimony,' Fennekohl v. United States, D.C.App., 354 A.2d 238, 240 (1976) (quoting Kaplan v. California, 413 U.S. 115, 121, 93 S.Ct. 2680, 37 L.Ed.2d 492 (1973)), and that such evidence should be admitted if the opinion offered will be likely to aid the trier in the search for truth. Jenkins v. United States, 113 U.S.App.D.C. 300, 306, 307 F.2d 637, 643 (1962). At the same time, because expert or scientific testimony possesses an aura of special reliability and trustworthiness, United States v. Amaral, 488 F.2d 1148, 1152 (9th Cir. 1973), the proffer of such testimony must be carefully scrutinized. Over the years, appellate courts have applied two levels of analysis to a trial court's ruling on expert testimony. First, there is the question of admissibility, for which a three-fold test is applied. See Dyas v. United States, D.C.App., 376 A.2d 827, 832, cert. denied, 434 U.S. 973, 98 S.Ct. 529, 54 L.Ed.2d 464 (1977). Second, the probative value of the testimony must outweigh its prejudicial impact. See United States v. Green, 548 F.2d 1261, 1267 (6th Cir. 1977); Amaral, supra .
Of the three grounds given by the trial court for excluding Dr. Walker's testimony, only the second (it would invade[] the province of the jury . . .) goes to admissibility. There are two ways in which an expert can preempt the jury's function. The expert either can speak too directly to the ultimate issue ( i. e., guilt or innocence), see United States v. Spaulding, 293 U.S. 498, 506, 55 S.Ct. 273, 79 L.Ed. 617 (1935); Lampkins v. United States, D.C.App., 401 A.2d 966, 970 (1979); Washington v. United States, 129 U.S.App.D.C. 29, 40-41, 390 F.2d 444, 455-56 (1967), or can speak to matters in which the jury is just as competent as the expert to consider and weigh the evidence and draw the necessary conclusions, Lampkins, supra at 969 ( i. e., the matter is `not beyond the ken of the average layman,' id. ; Dyas, supra at 832). 1. Here, the expert would not preempt in either fashion. As to the first  the ultimate facts or ultimate issue rule  Dr. Walker was not going to express an opinion on the ultimate question whether Mrs. Ibn-Tamas actually and reasonably believed she was in danger when she shot her husband. Rather, this expert would have merely supplied background data to help the jury make that crucial determination. See United States v. Hearst, 412 F.Supp. 889 (N.D. Cal.1976) ( Hearst I ). In any event, the ultimate issue rule has, over time, been reduced to a prohibition only against questions to an expert which, in effect, submit the whole case to an expert witness for decision. Id. [13] There is no such risk here. 2. Even when an expert is not speaking to the ultimate facts or issue, he or she cannot testify to matters which the jury itself is just as competent to consider. Lampkins, supra at 969. In order to evaluate this concern, we have adopted a three-fold test for admissibility: (1) the subject matter must be so distinctively related to some science, profession, business or occupation as to be beyond the ken of the average layman; (2) the witness must have 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 v. United States, supra at 832 (quoting McCormick on Evidence § 13 (2d ed. E. Cleary 1972)) (emphasis omitted).] See Waggaman v. Forstmann, D.C.App., 217 A.2d 310, 311 (1966). Thus, the subject of the testimony must lend itself to expertise, the proffered expert must be qualified to give it, and experts must have studied the subject in a manner that will justify an expert opinion. The substantive element of this test, whether the expert witness' subject matter is beyond the ken of the average layman, means that Dr. Walker's testimony, to be admissible, must provide a relevant insight which the jury otherwise could not gain in evaluating appellant's self-defense testimony about her relationship with her husband. More specifically, Dr. Walker must purport to shed light on a relevant aspect of their relationship which a layperson, without expert assistance, would not perceive from the evidence itself. On direct examination, Mrs. Ibn-Tamas had testified that immediately before the shooting Dr. Ibn-Tamas had told her to pack and leave home by 10:00 a. m. When she replied that she could not, he hit her in the head, under the arms, and in the thighs, and kicked her in the stomach even though she was pregnant. She continued: I saw he was looking over there on the bureau, so I saw the pistol, and he looked like he was going to go for the pistol. I just picked it up. I shot the bottom of the door, and I said, Just please get out of here, and please, please leave us alone. (The witness is crying.) And then he was backing out of the door, and he said, You are going now. And he just kept looking at me. And I heard him go down the steps, and so I had my little girl's hand. I knew after I shot that shot I had to get out of the house. I just knew he was going to kill me. So I had my little girl in my hand and we started to go down the steps real fast, and we got to the top and he jumps back from the landing. I thought he had gone all the way down, and so I took my leg back, pulled my little girl back, and we were next to the wall, and I just shot the gun. He backed up against the wall, (indicating) went back to the wall, and he kept down at the steps with his eyes still on my face, and he went down the stairs, jumping two at a time, doing like that, and he kept looking back with his back to the wall, and on the way down the steps he said, I am going to kill you, you dirty bitch. He got at the bottom of the steps and he looked at me and he just went in the office, and I knew I had to get out of that door. (The witness is crying.) I knew it. And I had my little girl by the hand. She seemed like  when he got to the bottom of the steps, she thought we were supposed to follow him. She jumped like she was going in front, and she looks and she says, Daddy. And I looked in there and he was, he was just like he was waiting for me. He was standing over just like  something like that. (Indicating.) And I just knew he had a gun. I shot in the room, and I turned to go out the front door, and after I turned my head I heard him fall. I heard him fall, and I knew I had shot him. On cross-examination the government attempted to discredit this testimony by suggesting to the jury, through its questions, that Mrs. Ibn-Tamas' account of the relationship with her husband over the years had been greatly overdrawn, and that her testimony about perceiving herself in imminent danger on February 23, was therefore implausible. For example, the government implied to the jury that the logical reaction of a woman who was truly frightened by her husband (let alone regularly brutalized by him) would have been to call the police from time to time or to leave him. [14] In an effort to rebut this line of attack by the government, the defense proffered Dr. Walker's testimony to (1) inform the jury that there is an identifiable class of persons who can be characterized as battered women, (2) explain why the mentality and behavior of such women are at variance with the ordinary lay perception of how someone would be likely to react to a spouse who is a batterer, and thus (3) provide a basis from which the jury could understand why Mrs. Ibn-Tamas perceived herself in imminent danger at the time of the shooting. More specifically, Dr. Walker told the trial court, out of the presence of the jury, that she had studied 110 women who had been beaten by their husbands. Her studies revealed three consecutive phases in the relationships: tension building, when there are small incidents of battering; acute battering incident, when beatings are severe; and loving-contrite, when the husband becomes very sorry and caring. Dr. Walker then testified that women in this situation typically are low in self-esteem, feel powerless, and have few close friends, since their husbands commonly accuse[] them of all kinds of things with friends, and they are embarrassed. They don't want to cause their friends problems, too. Because there are periods of harmony, battered women tend to believe their husbands are basically loving, caring men; the women assume that they, themselves, are somehow responsible for their husbands' violent behavior. They also believe, however, that their husbands are capable of killing them, and they feel there is no escape. Unless a shelter is available, these women stay with their husbands, not only because they typically lack a means of self-support but also because they fear that if they leave they will be found and hurt even more. Dr. Walker stressed that wife batterers come from all racial, social and economic, groups (including professionals), and that batterers commonly escalate their abusiveness when their wives are pregnant. She added that battered women are very reluctant to tell anyone that their husbands beat them. Of those studied, 60% had never done so before (Dr. Walker typically found them in hospitals), 40% had told a friend, and only 10% had called the police. When asked about appellant, whom she had interviewed, Dr. Walker replied that Mrs. Ibn-Tamas was a classic case of the battered wife. Dr. Walker added her belief that on the day of the killing, when Dr. Ibn-Tamas had been beating his wife despite protests that she was pregnant, Mrs. Ibn-Tamas' pregnancy had had a major impact on the situation. . . . [T]hat is a particularly crucial time. Dr. Walker's testimony, therefore, arguably would have served at least two basic functions: (1) it would have enhanced Mrs. Ibn-Tamas' general credibility in responding to cross-examination designed to show that her testimony about the relationship with her husband was implausible; and (2) it would have supported her testimony that on the day of the shooting her husband's actions had provoked a state of fear which led her to believe she was in imminent danger (I just knew he was going to kill me), and thus responded in self-defense. Dr. Walker's contribution, accordingly, would have been akin to the psychiatric testimony admitted in the case of Patricia Hearst to explain the effects kidnapping, prolonged incarceration, and psychological and physical abuse may have had on the defendant's mental state at the time of the robbery, insofar as such mental state is relevant to the asserted defense of coercion or duress. Hearst I, supra at 890. Dr. Walker's testimony would have supplied an interpretation of the facts which differed from the ordinary lay perception (she could have gotten out, you know) advocated by the government. The substantive element of the Dyas, supra, test  beyond the ken of the average layman  is accordingly met here. We conclude, therefore, that as to either substantive basis for ruling that Dr. Walker's testimony would invade[] the province of the jury  either the ultimate issue or the beyond the ken basis  the trial court erred as a matter of law. 3. Because Dyas, supra, provides a three-fold test, we must consider, next, whether the trial court can be said to have ruled, implicitly, that the expert testimony was inadmissible for failure to meet either the second or third elements of that test. By way of background, we note that although a trial court's ruling to exclude expert testimony is reversible only for abuse of discretion  for being manifestly erroneous, Douglas, supra at 295  there is an important tradeoff for giving the trial court such latitude: that court must take no shortcuts; it must exercise its discretion with reference to all the necessary criteria. Johnson v. United States, D.C.App., 398 A.2d 354, 363-67 (1979). Otherwise, the very reason for such deference  i. e., the trial court's opportunity to observe, hear, and otherwise evaluate the witness  will be compromised. Thus, the appellate court must not affirm a ruling premised on trial court discretion unless the record clearly manifests either (1) that the trial court has ruled on each essential criterion, or (2) that the trial court, as a matter of law, had but one option. Id. at 364. We therefore confront the question whether the record clearly manifests a trial court ruling that Dr. Walker did not have sufficient skill, knowledge, or experience in the field (second Dyas criterion), or that the state of the pertinent art or scientific knowledge was insufficient for an expert opinion (third Dyas criterion). Dr. Walker testified as to her credentials, her study of battered women, and her diagnosis of Mrs. Ibn-Tamas. The court then inquired whether Dr. Walker was offering a medical diagnosis and asked several questions about the 110 women she had interviewed. After reviewing the record, we cannot say that the trial court's ruling was meant to encompass the second or third Dyas criterion. We are mindful that in scrutinizing the trial court's ruling for abuse of discretion, the reviewing court may examine the record and infer the reasoning upon which the trial court made its determination, Johnson, supra, at 366; but it would stretch the record too far to conclude that the trial court, in ruling that Dr. Walker's testimony would invade the province of the jury, implied additional findings that Dr. Walker's credentials are unworthy or her study unreliable. 4. The question thus becomes whether the trial court, despite its failure to rule on the second or third Dyas criterion, had but one option, Johnson, supra at 364  i. e., whether Dr. Walker's testimony is inadmissible as a matter of law. This question is derived from a settled rule: [I]n reviewing the decision of a lower court, it must be affirmed if the result is correct although the lower court relied upon a wrong ground or gave a wrong reason. Helvering v. Gowran, 302 U.S. 238, 245, 58 S.Ct. 154, 158, 82 L.Ed. 224. The reason for this rule is obvious. It would be wasteful to send a case back to a lower court to reinstate a decision which it had already made but which the appellate court concluded should properly be based on another ground within the power of the appellate court to formulate. [ Securities and Exchange Commission v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 88, 63 S.Ct. 454, 459, 87 L.Ed. 626 (1943).] Accord, Duddles v. United States, D.C.App., 399 A.2d 59, 64 (1979) (this court can affirm the denial of a motion to suppress if, for any reason, the ruling is correct); Simpkins v. Brooks, D.C.Mun.App., 49 A.2d 549, 552 (1946) (decision must be affirmed if the result was correct although the trial court relied upon a wrong ground or gave a wrong reason). [15] The Chenery rule, therefore, permits the appellate court to affirm a trial court ruling when the court gave a wrong reason  or gave no reason at all [16]  if the ruling is correct. For example, the appellate court can affirm, despite the trial court's erroneous reasoning, by applying an alternate legal ground to undisputed facts, e. g., Duddles, supra ; Simpkins, supra, or can affirm when the trial court gives no reasons as long as there is conclusive evidentiary support for the applicable legal rule, e. g., Harper v. Wyatt, D.C.App., 281 A.2d 442 (1971); Karath v. Generalis, D.C.App., 277 A.2d 650 (1971). See notes 15 and 16 supra. In either situation, the appellate court is using its traditional power, as final arbiter, to apply the law to the facts, and is holding that the decision is correct as a matter of law in the sense that the trial court, properly instructed, inevitably would reach the same result. In such cases, the appellate court avoids the waste of judicial resources that would result from a remand to the trial court for a mere rewrite of the decision. [17] In the present case, therefore, the question is whether the trial court was correct in ruling Dr. Walker's testimony inadmissible because  even assuming that the trial court considered only the first Dyas criterion  we can say, on this record, that the defense proffer necessarily failed to meet either the second or third Dyas criterion. We turn to that inquiry. 5. The most we can say from this record is that the second Dyas criterion  sufficient skill, knowledge, or experience in the expert's field  may or may not have been satisfied. Although no one has questioned Dr. Walker's qualifications as a clinical psychologist, [18] the expert's credentials must be sufficient for the type of psychological testimony proffered. The defense proffered Dr. Walker not only to give the jury a description of the phenomenon called wife battering but also, more specifically, to compare appellant with the battered women Dr. Walker had identified and studied. In Jenkins, supra, the federal circuit court in this jurisdiction addressed the question whether experts without medical training  in that case, three defense psychologists  were qualified to diagnose the presence of a specific mental illness. The court concluded that although the defense experts' lack of medical training left them unqualified to treat any pathology, these psychologists were not necessarily lacking in the expertise required to suggest the diagnostic category into which an accused's condition fits, and relat[e] it to his past behavior. . . . Id. 113 U.S. App.D.C. at 307, 307 F.2d at 644. The court emphasized that, in fact, [t]he kinds of witnesses whose opinions courts have received, even though they lacked medical training and would not be permitted by law to treat the conditions described, are legion. Id. (Emphasis omitted). [19] On this record, we cannot resolve the question of Dr. Walker's qualifications; but we can say on the basis of her background, see note 18 supra, coupled with Jenkins, supra, that she cannot be disqualified as a matter of law. [20] 6. We turn, finally, to the third Dyas criterion: whether the state of the pertinent art or scientific knowledge is sufficient to permit an expert opinion. The government argues that the battered woman concept is not sufficiently developed, as a matter of commonly accepted scientific knowledge, to warrant testimony under the guise of expertise. The government relies substantially on Frye v. United States, 54 App.D.C. 46, 293 F. 1013 (1910): Just when a scientific principle or discovery crosses the line between the experimental and demonstrable stages is difficult to define. Somewhere in this twilight zone the evidential force of the principle must be recognized, and while courts will go a long way in admitting expert testimony deduced from a well-recognized scientific principle or discovery, the thing from which the deduction is made must be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs. [ Id. at 47, 293 F. at 1014 (emphasis added).] The government is mistaken. First, as discussed earlier, the relevant expert diagnosis is not limited here to medical diagnosis; the particular field in which Dr. Walker's testimony belongs, id., is broad enough to include clinical psychology. See Jenkins, supra . Next, it is important to note that the third criterion focuses on the general acceptance of a particular methodology in the field, not (as the government would have it) on the subject matter studied. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recently emphasized that Frye, supra  which rejected admissibility of lie detector results  dealt with admissibility of expert testimony based on new methods of scientific measurement. United States v. Addison, 162 U.S.App.D.C. 199, 201, 498 F.2d 741, 743 (1974). Thus, the third criterion is directed to the general acceptance of generic categories of scientific inquiry, such as use of the polygraph, spectrographic identification, psycholinguistics, tests for marijuana, and even neutron activation analysis, as well as the variety of analyses used by psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. [21] It is true that the state of scientific knowledge itself can be so meager in a particular field of study that courts will preclude reliance on expert testimony about it, see, e. g., Tonkovich v. Dept. of Labor & Industries, 31 Wash.2d 220, 195 P.2d 638 (1948) (court took judicial notice that cause of cancer is unknown and ignored expert testimony that plaintiff's cancer resulted from on-the-job injury); but such instances merely reflect the court's conclusion that no reliable methodology for making the inquiry has been discovered; the proffer did not meet a threshold test of believability. Basically, therefore, the third test deals with the state of the art of inquiry, not with the quantity of substantive knowledge. See Douglas, supra, at 296; United States v. Hearst (Hearst II), 412 F.Supp. 893, (N.D.Cal.1976), aff'd, 563 F.2d 1331 (9th Cir. 1977). [22] In summary, satisfaction of the third Dyas criterion begins  and ends  with a determination of whether there is general acceptance of a particular scientific methodology, not an acceptance, beyond that, of particular study results based on that methodology. [23] Thus, the relevant question here is whether Dr. Walker's methodology for identifying and studying battered women has such general acceptance  not whether there is, in addition, a general acceptance of the battered woman concept derived from that methodology. [24] Again, on this record, we cannot say, as a matter of law, that Dr. Walker's methodology falls short. [25] 7. We conclude, therefore, that the trial court erred in ruling Dr. Walker's testimony inadmissible on the ground that it would invade the province of the jury; and, on the record to date, we cannot exclude that testimony as inadmissible on any other ground.
Because admissibility remains an open question, we turn to the second level of inquiry: probative value versus prejudicial impact. The trial court's first and third grounds for excluding Dr. Walker's testimony related to the prejudicial character of the evidence. Specifically, the court stated that the evidence would go[] beyond those [prior violent] acts which a jury should consider [26] and that, in effect, the testimony put the decedent on trial as a batterer, [a]nd that is not being tried in this case. We have stated, apropos of this first ground, that prior acts of violence are admissible in homicide cases where the defendant raises the claim of self-defense against the decedent as the alleged first aggressor. United States v. Akers, D.C. App., 374 A.2d 874, 877 (1977) (emphasis omitted). The trial court, in fact, admitted a substantial amount of evidence relating to the decedent's earlier attacks on the appellant and other persons. See Part I.A. supra. In light of the admission of this evidence, it is apparent that the incremental, prejudicial impact of Dr. Walker's testimony on battered wives, including the labeling of Dr. Ibn-Tamas as a batterer, would have been minimal. In contrast, as we have previously observed, the testimony on battered wives was highly probative. Because Mrs. Ibn-Tamas' identity as a battered wife, if established, may have had a substantial bearing on her perceptions and behavior at the time of the killing, it was central to her claim of self-defense. We conclude, accordingly, as a matter of law, that the probative value of this expert testimony would outweigh the risk of engender[ing] vindictive passions within the jury or . . . confus[ing] the issues. Green, supra at 1268. [27]
Because Dr. Walker's testimony was central to the defense theory of the case, we cannot conclude, as a matter of law, that the trial court's exclusion of this testimony, if ultimately in error, was harmless. See Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 765, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946). On the other hand, because the record does not establish as a matter of law that the second and third Dyas criteria for admissibility have been met, we cannot say that the conviction should be reversed. Accordingly, we must remand the case for a trial court determination of admissibility consistent with this opinion. The court may take additional evidence or not, in its discretion. [28] If the trial court then rules that the testimony is admissible, it shall order a new trial. If the testimony is ruled inadmissible, appellant shall be entitled to appeal that ruling. [29]