Court Opinion

ID: 9617024
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:51:26.134574+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:04.669230
License: Public Domain

COMPTON, J.,
dissenting in part.
*732The factual question concerning the victim’s exact position at the time of the shooting, that is, her location in the room and whether she was sitting, crouching or standing, was aptly described by the prosecutor as “the very heart of the case” and a “key factor” in the case. The witness Smith, supervisor of the Danville Police Department’s “Mobile Crime Lab”,, was permitted to give his opinion that when shot the deceased was sitting in a particular chair at a specific location in the room. This theory was based on Smith’s examination of the crime scene eight days after the shooting. In my opinion, the trial court committed prejudicial error in admitting this testimony over defendant’s objection.
In the first place, the conditions at the scene as reconstructed by Smith were not substantially similar to the conditions existing at the time of the shooting. See Richards v. Commonwealth, 107 Va. 881, 893, 59 S.E. 1104, 1108 (1908). In the second place, under the facts and circumstances of this case, the jury was as competent to form an opinion on that subject as the witness. Hence, I believe the trial judge permitted this witness to invade the province of the jury.
In its attempt to discredit the defendant’s testimony, the Commonwealth sought to relate certain blood patterns found at various levels on the refrigerator with the victim’s position and the angle of the gun at the moment of the shooting. Thus, it became important in dealing with these variables for the prosecutor to show by the evidence the exact position of the table and a chair in which he claimed the deceased was sitting at the time. Smith said that when he went to the scene more than a week after the shooting he repositioned a chair and the table to locations where he thought they were on the day in question. This was accomplished by placing that furniture in clear spots on the floor appearing in the midst of blood stains. But an examination of one set of close-up photographs showing the floor, taken by a deputy sheriff within two hours of the event, and of another set taken by Smith after he repositioned the chair fails to reveal an amount of blood on the floor in the immediate area of the chair sufficient to make the definitive marks that Smith says he used to reset the scene. Moreover, the photographs taken immediately after the shooting before the body had been removed, which apparently were not used by Smith in his reconstruction, show the chair in a different position from where Smith later placed it. Furthermore, Smith’s reconstruction failed to take into account that the chair may have been moved during the period after the gun discharged *733and before the police first arrived at the scene. The photographs show the body of the victim lying directly under the table with the lower portion of the corpse adjacent to one of the several chairs near the table. It is entirely likely, therefore, that the victim moved the chair as she was falling after the shot and before blood accumulated on the floor or that the defendant moved the chair as he was attempting to administer to the victim after the shotgun blast. In either case, even the photographs taken immediately after the event would not disclose the exact location of all the furniture at the time of the shot which killed the victim.
But even if it is assumed that Smith’s reconstruction of the scene was accurate, the inference to be drawn from all the facts relating to the position of the victim at the moment she was killed was solely within the province of the jury. One of the cases cited by the majority is direct authority for the position I take on this question.
In Venable v. Stockner, 200 Va. 900, 108 S.E.2d 380 (1959), this court held that the trial judge had committed reversible error in allowing a “safety engineer, accident analyst” to reconstruct the scene of a motor vehicle collision and to state the position of the vehicles with reference to the center of the highway at the moment of a head-on collision. As the majority has pointed out, we said in Stockner that “where the facts and circumstances shown in evidence are such that men of ordinary intelligence are capable of comprehending them, forming an intelligent opinion about them, and drawing their own conclusions therefrom, the opinion of an expert founded upon such facts is inadmissible.” 200 Va. at 904,108 S.E.2d at 383. The Stockner court said that while a witness may describe tire marks, skid marks, or cuts which he observed on the road at or near the place of an automobile accident, the inferences to be drawn from such testimony are peculiarly within the province of the jury. 200 Va. at 905, 108 S.E.2d at 383.
Likewise in this case, I believe that if a proper foundation is laid, the expert witness could properly testify as to the location of furniture at the scene, the usual pattern formed when blood is impelled by the force of a shotgun blast, the flow of spattered blood up or down the side of a refrigerator, and the time it takes blood to coagulate. But I do not believe that given these facts it is proper to allow the expert to give his opinion on the position of the victim when shot. The subject of such an inference is not so distinctly related to some science, profession, business or occupation as to be beyond the perception of the average layman. C. *734McCormick, Law of Evidence § 13 (2d ed. E. Cleary 1972); see Grasty v. Tanner, 206 Va. 723, 725-27,146 S.E.2d 252, 253-55 (1966).
For these reasons, I would reverse this conviction and remand the case for a new trial.
CANSON, C. J., joins in this dissent.