Court Opinion

ID: 9768842
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 13:52:41.554192+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:47.345238
License: Public Domain

GEORGE M. FLANIGAN, Special Judge,
concurring in result with respect to I and concurring in full with respect to II and III.
In State v. Taylor, 663 S.W.2d 235, 239 (Mo. banc 1984), this Court said:
The rule in Missouri is that expert opinion testimony “should never be admitted unless it is clear that the jurors themselves are not capable, for want of experience or knowledge of the subject, to draw correct conclusions from the facts proved.”
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However, expert opinion testimony is not admissible as it relates to credibility of witnesses.
The principal opinion states: “In Whit-mill’s trial several safeguards ensured that the defendant had an adequate opportunity to apprise the jury of the difficulties inherent in an eyewitness identification.” Those safeguards — right of cross-examination, right to make an opening statement and a closing argument, the giving of MAI-CR3d 302.01 — are available to every criminal defendant. Indeed, if the Taylor standard for admissibility is met by the defendant, the state’s evidence would be insufficient to support a conviction.1
In my view, the admissibility of the testimony of an alleged expert on the reliability of eyewitness identification is not a matter lying within the sound discretion of the trial court. Under the rule as stated in Taylor, the proffered evidence was inadmissible and the trial court had a duty to exclude it.
I respectfully concur in the result with respect to part I. I concur fully with parts II and III of the principal opinion.

. See generally 46 ALR4th 1047 (Admissibility, at criminal prosecution, of expert testimony on reliability of eyewitness testimony.) Some of the cases collected there contain language to the effect that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding such testimony. Most, if not all, of the cases, however, are appeals by the defendant whose offer of the testimony was rejected by the trial court. If the trial court had admitted the testimony, the defendant would not complain of that fact on appeal and, at least ordinarily, the state could not appeal. Thus, appeals involving the propriety of the trial court’s action in admitting the testimony, as an exercise of discretion, are rare or nonexistent.