Court Opinion

ID: 9782116
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 17:59:33.625791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:48.192896
License: Public Domain

COATS, Chief Judge,
concurring.
A contested issue at Pease's trial was whether Arlo Olson, from a distance of 400 feet or more, could identify the people who attacked Franklin Dayton. Olson testified that he could identify the four assailants from this distance. To rebut Olson's testimony, the defense called Dr. Geoffrey Lof-tus, an expert in human visual perception and memory. Dr. Loftus testified that, even under optimal conditions, it was impossible to identify someone from even 200 feet away.
During their deliberations, the jurors attempted to test Dr. Loftus's assertion by looking out of the jury room window and observing the people below. Then, dissatisfied with this investigation, the jurors went outside and conducted the experiment that is at issue in this case.
The ultimate question facing Judge Esch, and now this Court, is whether the jurors' act of conducting this experiment on the street outside the jury room undermines confidence in their verdict to such an extent that we should grant Pease a new trial.
We would certainly expect jurors to critically examine Dr. Loftus's assertion that it is not humanly possible to identify a person from a distance of 200 feet.. It is all but inevitable that, faced with this assertion, the jurors would test it. We frequently observe other people at a distance in our daily life, and it seems obvious that, after hearing Dr. Loftus's testimony, any juror with normal curiosity would test their own ability to observe and identify people at a distance-probably by doing something similar to what the jurors did in this case: looking out the window of the jury room, or looking down the street during a lunch break or when driving home at night.
Had the jurors stopped there, it seems unlikely that Pease would be entitled to a new trial. It would simply be a matter of the jurors using their common sense and everyday experience to resolve a factual issue.
We could, of course, try to stop jurors from personally assessing the credibility or probative foree of in-court testimony-by specifically instructing jurors not to conduct these types of common-sense experiments and observations. But if we did this-if the law strictly prohibited jurors from conducting any kind of extrajudicial evaluation whatsoever-then it is unlikely that any verdict would withstand close serutiny. After an adverse verdict, a disappointed litigant could obtain a new trial by simply questioning the jurors and getting them to admit that they did something to test the factual assertions that they heard in court.
It is true that the jurors in Pease's case did not limit themselves to observations from the jury room window. Instead, they engaged (as a group) in mutual observation at a distance on the street. But it does not seem to me that this materially changes the analysis.
Even though the jurors continued their testing on the street, observing each other at a distance, they were still engaged in the same kind of common-sense experimentation, based on everyday experience, that would have occurred had the jurors confined their observations to the jury room. In fact, the jurors were probably able to conduct a more accurate experiment on the street, since they could be sure that they were all making their observations across the same distance.
*996It is true, as Pease points out, that the credibility of Dr. Loftus's testimony was not the ultimate issue. Dr. Loftus's assertion about the limits of human perception was relevant because it undereut Olson's claim that he was able to identify the men who attacked Franklin Dayton.
Moreover, Olson admitted that he had been drinking and that it was dark when he made the identification, and he further admitted that he was able to see the men for only a limited time. Thus, the conditions under which the jurors observed each other on the street were quite different from the cireumstances surrounding Olson's observations. But the cireumstances of Olson's observation, and the potential difficulties that he faced in making the identification, were thoroughly aired at Pease's trial and were extensively argued to the jury. It is unrealistic to think that the jurors were unaware of the differences between the cireumstances of their experiment and the actual cireum-stances of Olson's identification.
Because the jurors must have been aware of these substantial differences, the jurors' experiment only makes sense as a test of Dr. Loftus's testimony, not a test of Olson's testimony. -If the jurors found that Dr. Loftus's assertion about the limits of human perception under optimal conditions was accurate, this would largely undermine the credibility of Olson's testimony. But even if the jurors concluded that Dr. Loftus had exaggerated the limitations of human perception, the jurors would still have to resolve the question of whether, under less-than-optimal conditions, Olson could make an accurate identification of the men who attacked Franklin Dayton.
It appears to me that the jurors engaged in a sensible effort to resolve the credibility of Dr. Loftus's testimony, and that they understood both the significance and the limitations of their experiment. This was the sort of factual issue that we routinely trust juries to resolve using their common sense and their combined life experience. For these reasons, I conclude that the jurors' conduct does not undermine the trustworthiness or fairness of their verdict. Thus, Pease is not entitled to a new trial.