Court Opinion

ID: 9701069
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:03:09.533569+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:18.726720
License: Public Domain

Concurring and Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno :
I thoroughly concur in the decision of the Court and heartily approve the verdict. However, I must dissent to that part of the Majority Opinion which finds no fault in the trial judge’s instruction on the subject of expert evidence. The trial judge said: “opinion evidence is the lowest type of testimony, the lowest type of testimony possible to come into a courtroom. And when the defendant produced this testimony from this expert, this doctor, he produced the lowest type of testimony.” (Emphasis supplied)
After the judge pushed the doctor’s testimony into the third subterranean stratum of unreliability, he practically buried it without benefit of clergy, all of which he had no right to do.
The judge’s charge, as above quoted, was not only not in accordance with law, but it was an insult to every expert who comes into a courtroom to testify. Many trials could never achieve a just and proper result without the advice, counsel, views and opinions of experts and technicians who, on a given subject, know more than the rest of the witnesses, plus the lawyers and the judges. To characterize these doctors, chemists, mathematicians, engineers, auditors, and electricians as the “lowest of the low” is to do immeasur*590able harm to the cause of justice and to invite guesswork in fields where the layman is without guide, direction or assistance.
The Majority Opinion quotes from previous cases where this Court has approved of derogatory remarks addressed to expert witnesses. Each time this Court places its approval on such abusive language, the expert witness is driven lower into the mire of disrespect, contumely and unreliability, — without cause and without the fairness which should be apparent in every phase of every trial and appeal.
The scoffing characterizations employed by the trial judge in this case, which involved the solemn charge of murder, was, as I see it, wholly improper. The trial judge could have pointed out wherein he believed the expert testimony was not convincing but for him to say that it was low, low, low was to substitute invective for analysis, name-calling for description, and stigma for exposition. The value of a witness’s testimony is not to be determined by altitude or depth. What makes testimony “the lowest type of testimony”? To speak in terms of “lowness” is to enter into the sphere of morality, and to ascribe to a witness deviation from rectitude, without any evidence to support turpitude is to inflict a gratuitous harm the judge is not authorized to inflict.