Court Opinion

ID: 9699508
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:29:05.152018+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:35:55.769455
License: Public Domain

Murphy, J.
(dissenting). The opinion is strangely silent about the circumstances under which the trial judge took judicial notice of the principle of radar as a scientific device for the measurement of speed. Over the defendant’s objection, the state police trooper who operated the radar apparatus was permitted to testify concerning the principles of radar, the operation of the radar instrument and his observation of the radar speedmeter when the defendant’s vehicle passed through the radar beam. Later the defendant moved to strike the trooper’s testimony because no expert testimony had been offered by the state that the principle of radar as a speed-testing device was scientifically accurate. The court, in denying the motion, stated that, when the Cir*375enit Court was organized, the judges, as a body, decided that radar had reached the point where it would be accepted as an “established function” to measure speed, and that it would no longer be necessary to prove the principles of radar by expert testimony. I am unable to agree that this violation of the rules of evidence should receive the imprimatur of this court.
In Nichols v. Nichols, 126 Conn. 614, 621, 13 A.2d 591, we said: “Most matters which the court may [judicially] notice fall into one of two classes, those which come to the knowledge of men generally in the course of the ordinary experience of life, and are therefore in the mind of the trier, or those which are generally accepted by mankind as true and are capable of ready demonstration by a means commonly recognized as authoritative. Roden v. Connecticut Co., 113 Conn. 408, 415, 155 Atl. 721. As to matters falling within the first class, obviously there is no occasion to introduce evidence. As to those falling within the second class, it may, in some cases, be the duty of counsel to provide the court with a means of ascertaining them, and . . . witnesses can be called for that purpose .... However, matter which it is claimed the court should judicially notice should ordinarily be called to its attention by a party seeking to take advantage of it in the course of presenting evidence in the case so that, if there is ground upon which it may be contradicted or explained, the adverse party will be afforded an opportunity to do so”. This rule now becomes archaic, and we, in effect, are holding that the principle and the efficiency of radar are such self-evident scientific facts of common knowledge that judicial notice can be taken of them. See Langin v. New Britain, 149 Conn. 431, 434, 180 *376A.2d 626; Silverman v. Swift & Co., 141 Conn. 450, 458, 107 A.2d 277.
The opinion refers to Richardson, Kopper, Carosell and Coombs, and the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology apparently as authorities on the subject. None of these works was offered or marked as an exhibit in evidence in the trial court. Where does this court acquire the power to reach into the unknown and use them for this purpose? In Kaplan v. Mashkin Freight Lines, Inc., 146 Conn. 327, 150 A.2d 602, we held it to be error for a party to read from treatises in argument to the jury when they had not been made full exhibits in the case. We are just as much in error in using the named works in the opinion here without any inkling as to the qualifications of the authors or the reliability of their offerings.
Also, the opinion shifts the burden of proof in this case, a criminal case, to the defendant. From now on, anyone who is caught speeding by radar is automatically guilty. If a radar reading is to be prima facie evidence of speeding, that rule should be adopted by the legislature, as has been done in Virginia and Maryland. Md. Ann. Code art. 35 §91 (1965); Va. Code Ann. §46.1-198 (1950). According to a recent periodical, the police in forty-five states use radar. But only a small minority, four, have adopted the judicial-notice theory.
I would have no objection to the taking of judicial notice by an appellate court under circumstances similar to those in the Dantonio case in New Jersey and the Everight case in Arkansas, both cited as authorities in the opinion. See Everight v. Little Rock, 230 Ark. 695, 326 S.W.2d 796; State v. Dantonio, 18 N.J. 570, 115 A.2d 35. In each of these cases, experts testified in the trial court on the use*377fulness and reliability of radar to test the speed of vehicles. The trial courts did not judicially notice radar. The Supreme Court in these states did so on the basis of the facts established in the trial courts. In the absence of legislative recognition of radar, we should not affirm the judgment on the record and procedure in this case.