Opinion ID: 1346416
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: the out-of-court experiment

Text: The appellant further asserts that the trial court erred when it refused to admit into evidence the taped results of an out-of-court voice experiment conducted by defense counsel. The experiment was calculated to demonstrate that the rescue squad member who received the anonymous telephone call directing him to send an ambulance to the address of the victim, could not identify the voice of the caller as that of Glasure, the appellant's girlfriend. The State argues that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it refused to admit the results of the experiment because the conditions under which the experiment was conducted were not similar to the conditions of the actual telephone call. The results of an out-of-court experiment will not be admitted into evidence unless the party seeking to admit such evidence demonstrates that the conditions under which the experiment was conducted were substantially similar to those of the original conditions sought to be recreated and the question of whether to admit such evidence for consideration by the jury is within the sound discretion of the trial court. Syl. pt. 6, Spurlin v. Nardo, 145 W.Va. 408, 114 S.E.2d 913 (1960); syl. pt. 3, State v. Newman, 101 W.Va. 356, 132 S.E. 728 (1926). See also syl. pt. 5, State v. Taft, 144 W.Va. 704, 110 S.E.2d 727 (1959); syl. pt. 2, McClain v. Marietta Torpedo Co., 84 W.Va. 139, 100 S.E. 87 (1919); See generally 22A C.J.S. Criminal Law § 645(1) (Cum. Supp.1983). However, [w]hile there is no fixed standard of determining the degree of similarity required, the general rule is that the conditions should be substantially or proximately similar, and that the similarity need extend only to those conditions which govern or substantially affect the result. Syl. pt. 4, State v. Newman, supra . At the trial, the rescue squad member testified that at approximately 4:00 a.m. on the morning of September 15, 1981, he was awakened by a telephone call while on voluntary duty at the rescue squad. He indicated that during the seven to eight second telephone conversation, a female voice directed him to dispatch an ambulance to 136 Pine Street, the street address of the victim. The experiment in question was conducted on January 8, 1982, at approximately 11:30 a.m. from the office of the defense counsel. The defense counsel's secretary placed a telephone call to the rescue squad office at which time the rescue squad member consented to listen to the voices of five different women, including Glasure's. He then attempted to identify one of them as the voice of the anonymous caller who had made the call some four months earlier. In addition to the five women, both defense counsel and a private investigator were present for the experiment. Each woman spoke the following words over a telephone: Send an ambulance to 136 Pine Street and hurry. The women were instructed to speak those words in a manner as if they were actually calling an ambulance. At the conclusion of the experiment the rescue squad member requested a repeat of two of the voices and after compliance, he chose a voice other than Glasure's as the one most similar to that of the anonymous caller. The trial court did not err when it refused to admit into evidence the taped results of the out-of-court voice experiment proffered by the appellant. The validity of the results are questionable due mainly to the fact that they were not conducted under substantially similar circumstances as the anonymous telephone call of the early morning hours of September 15, 1981. In addition, the lack of participation by the prosecution and the late hour of its offering to the trial court all cast an aura of unreliability over the results. Therefore, the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it excluded the taped results of the out-of-court voice experiment from consideration by the jury.