Court Opinion

ID: 9690515
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 19:19:10.885358+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:58.598893
License: Public Domain

STUMBO, Justice,
dissenting.
With much dismay, I must dissent. The majority opinion is not only fundamentally flawed on several levels, but is also tremendously disheartening. The opinion condones the admission of Officer Smith’s testimony that the voice of the fourth speaker he heard on the tape “sounded as if it was of a male black.” This testimony not only impermissibly bolstered the testi*378mony of Detective Birkenhauer, whose version of events inculpating Appellant had been called into serious question by the testimony of the Commonwealth’s own informant, but also was incredibly prejudicial to Appellant, the sole black man sitting at the defense table. Additionally, the testimony was, by Officer Smith’s own admission, entirely irrelevant and probative of absolutely nothing. Thus, it should have been excluded under KRE 403 as being more prejudicial than probative.
I must first object to the basic premise which underlies the majority’s rationale in this case — that a person’s race can be ascertained simply by the sound and cadence of his voice, his pronunciation of certain words — his accent. An accent may be indicative of many things — how a person’s parents speak, the countries, regions or even neighborhoods in which he has lived, the schools he has attended, the languages he speaks, his social class, and even whom he admires. What it most definitely cannot indicate is the color of his skin.
Common sense should tell us this. The quality of a particular voice is sensed by hearing, just as the appearance of a person is sensed by sight. It is simply not possible to perceive appearance using the sense of hearing. One might presume that a particular voice or accent would be indicative of how the speaker might look. However, that presumption would be based solely on preconceived ideas, stereotypes, and assumptions, not on logic or reality.
Race, that is, skin color, must be perceived by sight. To say that a person is capable of ascertaining another’s race solely by hearing his voice is tantamount to saying the one can “hear a color” or “smell a sound” or “taste a noise.” One can no more determine that a person’s skin is pale, cinnamon, or ebony simply by hearing his voice, than one can perceive that an individual will have a British accent, a Portuguese accent, a New York accent or an Appalachian accent simply by gazing at his countenance and the color of his skin. Thus, it was entirely improper to permit Officer Smith to testify that the fourth voice on the videotape “sounded black.” This type of testimony would be improper in any context, but it is all the more so because the defendant was the lone black man sitting at the defense table. Although Appellant’s voice was unknown to both Smith and the jury, the overwhelming inference was that Appellant was the fourth speaker, and thus guilty as urged by Detective Birkenhauer.
The majority holds Officer Smith’s opinion that the voice on the tape sounded like that of a black man is perfectly acceptable as lay opinion which is rationally based on Smith’s perception, because “Smith testified that he had been a police officer for thirteen years and had spoken to black males on numerous occasions.” As discussed above, I fail to see any rationality to the notion that one can hear a person’s skin color. Let us, for the moment, assume that what Officer Smith was inartfully attempting to say, is that the voice he heard on the tape was spoken in an accent or dialect which he associated with African Americans, for reasons which he could not explain because he was not a linguist. This being so, Smith’s observations were still entirely inadmissible absent any showing that Appellant, himself, speaks with this kind of accent. As Smith had never heard Appellant speak and as Appellant chose not to testify at trial, there was no way to connect Appellant to the particular type of accent described by Smith. Instead, the jury was simply left with the impermissible inference that because Smith associated the voice with African Americans, and because Appellant was an African American, Appellant must be the person Smith heard.
Smith himself conceded the illogicality and irrelevance of his own testimony. Upon cross-examination, Smith acknowledged .not all black men sound alike, nor do all white men. He also acknowledged that some African American men “sound like whites,” and that “some white people sound like blacks.” In essence, Smith con*379ceded that Appellant’s voice and accent might sound like the accent Smith associated with African Americans, but that it might not. He could say no more, because he had never heard Appellant’s voice. Evidence is relevant when it tends to make the existence of a disputed issue more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence. KRE 401. Here, Smith’s testimony that the voice he heard sounded like an “African American accent” in no way tended to increase the probability that Appellant was the speaker, because there was no showing that Appellant, himself, spoke in the manner described. As Smith’s testimony was clearly irrelevant, yet undoubtedly extremely prejudicial to Appellant, it should have been excluded under KRE 408.
Finally I must take issue with the primary case the majority cites in an effort to find support for its unfortunate holding. Somehow, the majority has improperly broadened the issue before us to that of whether a lay witness may “express an opinion that an overheard voice was that of a particular nationality or race.” In so doing, the majority quotes at length from the case of People v. Sanchez, 129 Misc.2d 91, 492 N.Y.S.2d 683 (N.Y.Sup.Ct.1985), a case which is easily distinguishable from the instant controversy. There, the question was whether the suspect was speaking Spanish in a Dominican or Puerto Rican accent. That ease in no way dealt with the issue of accent as it relates to race or skin color, but rather as it relates to nationality. Given that one’s accent is largely affected by the country or region he or she grows up in, it is entirely reasonable to permit identification of a nationality based on a particular kind of accent, so long as the listener is familiar with the accent of that particular nationality. Such is not the case with the color of a person’s skin, which has absolutely no impact on the way a person speaks. I find the fact that the majority seems unable to grasp this obvious distinction to be extremely disconcerting.
As we approach the next millennium, the majority takes a tremendous step backwards with its holding today and permits prejudice and inference to convict a man where logic and objectivity would not.
LAMBERT, C.J., joins this dissenting opinion.