Opinion ID: 797075
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evidence of driving experiment

Text: 6 On appeal, Jackson first contends that the district court abused its discretion by admitting the marshal's testimony about the driving experiment. He concedes that he is a felon under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), but contends that he did not possess a firearm, and the evidentiary challenge goes to that element of the offense. Although he does not point to this provision, our review is governed by Federal Rule of Evidence 403, which renders inadmissible evidence whose probative value is outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. See United States v. Russell, 971 F.2d 1098, 1106 (4th Cir.1992); Kenneth S. Broun, McCormick on Evidence § 202 (6th ed.2006). 7 Evidence of experiments is most commonly used in the context of products liability law, where recreations of accidents, explosions, and product malfunctions are now common. See, e.g., Buscaglia v. United States, 25 F.3d 530, 533 (7th Cir.1994); Carey ex rel. Carey v. Hy-Temp Mfg., 929 F.2d 1229, 1235 n. 2 (7th Cir.1991). Because this type of evidence can be quite persuasive, in order to avoid unfair prejudice, the conditions under which an experiment is performed must be substantially similar to those surrounding the simulated event. Mihailovich v. Laatsch, 359 F.3d 892, 908 (7th Cir.2004). This is a flexible requirement: substantially similar does not mean identical, and dissimilarities can be explored on cross-examination. See Buscaglia, 25 F.3d at 533. In other words, as a general matter, dissimilarities between experimental and actual conditions affect the weight, not the admissibility of the evidence. 33A Fed. Proc., L.Ed. § 80:254 (2006). 8 Although there is little circuit precedent on the subject, the substantially similar requirement also applies in the criminal context. See United States v. Baldwin, 418 F.3d 575, 579-81 (6th Cir. 2005); United States v. Birch, 39 F.3d 1089, 1092-93 (10th Cir.1994); Russell, 971 F.2d at 1105-06. Whether in a criminal case or a civil one, however, the requirement's application always depends on the purpose for which the experiment is introduced. See Jones v. Ralls, 187 F.3d 848, 853 (8th Cir.1999). So if the purpose is to recreate an event, the timing and physics of which are critical, courts will only admit evidence of experiments that are conducted under nearly identical conditions as the actual event. Broun, McCormick § 202. For instance, in Jackson v. Fletcher, 647 F.2d 1020, 1026-28 (10th Cir.1981), the district court erred by admitting evidence of an experiment purporting to recreate an accident between a car and a truck in order to determine the precise speed of the truck at the time of collision. The court held that since the simulation truck was empty whereas the actual truck carried a full load (creating a weight differential of 37,000 pounds), and the two trucks were different model years, the experimental conditions were not substantially similar to the actual ones. Id. 9 By contrast, where the purpose of the experiment is not to recreate events but simply to rebut or falsify the opposing party's sweeping hypothesis, the substantial similarity requirement is relaxed. Broun, McCormick § 202. In Osborne v. United States, 542 F.2d 1015, 1019-20 (8th Cir.1976), the most similar federal circuit case on point, the defendant, accused of robbery, contended that he could not have committed the crime in the early afternoon because he applied for unemployment benefits at 2:00 p.m. in an office 23 miles away from the scene of the crime. In rebuttal, an FBI agent testified that he had driven from the crime scene to the unemployment office and showed, based on the drive time, that it was possible for the defendant to have committed the robbery and driven to the office, still arriving by 2:00. The appellate court affirmed the district court's admission of the evidence, holding that the experiment did not purport to recreate events as they actually occurred on the day of the robbery but rather established whether it was physically possible for [the defendant] to have traversed the distance between the stash point and the railway office in the time allowed. Id. at 1120. Other circuits have also concluded that dissimilarities of the type Jackson points out can be identified in cross-examination to weaken the evidence's impact, but they do not bar its admission in the first place. See Birch, 39 F.3d at 1092-93; Russell, 971 F.2d at 1105-06; United States v. Metzger, 778 F.2d 1195, 1204-05 (6th Cir. 1985); cf. Baldwin, 418 F.3d at 581 (although district court did not abuse discretion in excluding evidence of experiment, it would not have abused discretion had it admitted the evidence). 5 10 The case here is quite similar to Osborne. The government was attempting to cast doubt upon the defense's implication that Jackson could not have committed the shooting sometime after 2:00 p.m. and still had time to pick up his girlfriend at 2:43 p.m. (Since Nelms testified that the drive from Jackson's home to her work takes between 20 and 30 minutes, this is not the strongest alibi to begin with.) The government was not trying to recreate Jackson's actual drive. If, as the evidence tended to show, the drive could be completed in as little as 12 minutes, then Jackson could potentially have fled the scene of the shooting as late as 2:31 p.m., and could therefore have committed the shooting (and possessed the handgun) shortly after 2:00 p.m. The jury was permitted to weigh this evidence and consider the weaknesses elicited on cross-examination. If jurors thought the conditions of the experiment too dissimilar, they could give the evidence little weight. Although an ideal test would have recreated the traffic conditions, route, and time of day under which Jackson performed the drive, given the limited purpose for which the experiment was offered, the experiment was substantially similar to actual conditions. Had the testimony been offered in the government's case-in-chief, rather than in rebuttal of the defendant's story, a different result might be warranted. However, on the facts of this case, the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the evidence.