Court Opinion

ID: 9697217
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:08:46.586743+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:29.990948
License: Public Domain

EAKIN, Judge,
concurring.
While I concur in the result, I disagree that Dr. Sisson’s testimony failed to establish an adequate basis to admit evidence of nystagmus and its accentuation by alcohol. I believe it is important to differentiate Dr. Sisson’s proper testimony about the causal relationship between alcohol consumption and nystagmus from his testimony about the “HGN test,” which is inadmissible under existing caselaw. (Commonwealth v. Apollo, 412 Pa.Super. 453, 603 A.2d 1023 (1992)).
That consumption of alcohol causes nystagmus is no longer a question in the scientific community. That other factors may also induce nystagmus should not affect the admissibility of nystagmus testimony; factors other than alcohol may cause slurred speech or a staggered gait, but these resulting conditions are admissible beyond question. Not everyone who stumbles is intoxicated. Not every intoxicated person stumbles. Does this mean stumbling cannot be admitted to show intoxication? Clearly not — it is admissible, subject to explanation or refutation. The same should be true for nystagmus evidence.
The difference is that nystagmus evidence must come from an expert who can relate alcohol consumption to the tell-tale *187involuntary jerking of the eyes. It is proper testimony, despite some gap in scientific acceptance of cause and effect, to address the general public’s lack of familiarity with nystagmus. After all, the average person may be familiar with the most obvious signs of intoxication; they are hard to miss. Who, however, has watched an intoxicated person’s eyes’ ability to move smoothly as they follow an object passed in front of them? The fact that the average person may not detect nystagmus does not mean it does not exist — it just means the average person does not connect alcohol to the jerking movement of an individual’s eyes. Science can and does, and the connection is not so tenuous as to make all evidence of nystagmus inadmissible.
In the instant case, however, Dr. Sisson testified beyond the mere relationship between alcohol and nystagmus. He testified on “scoring” the driver’, and inferred a connection between scoring and a blood alcohol level. This connection is not subject to agreement within the scientific community, and it is this portion of Dr. Sisson’s testimony that is objectionable. Had Dr. Sisson confined his testimony to the relationship between alcohol consumption and nystagmus, I believe his testimony would have been proper and admissible.