Court Opinion

ID: 9565084
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:14:44.139211+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:23.407081
License: Public Domain

Justice Huskins
dissenting.
The majority opinion accurately depicts the present state of the law and is unquestionably correct unless we are prepared to take judicial notice of the laws of heredity. I think we should judicially recognize these hereditary laws and my dissent is based solely on that ground.
Defendant was charged with the willful failure to support his illegitimate child. He is presumed to be innocent. To establish his guilt the State is required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt (1) that defendant is the father of the child and (2) that he willfully failed to support it.
The mother of the child was the only witness for the State. She testified that she was unmarried and that the child, was conceived in October 1972, was a full-term baby and born on 12 July 1973. She swore that she had sexual relations with defendant two or three times a week in October and November 1972 and with no one else.
The only witness for the defendant was Dr. Eugene Dell Rutland, Jr. He testified that he tested the blood of the mother, the defendant and the child. These tests revealed that both the mother and the defendant had type 0 blood while the child had type A blood. Dr. Rutland then testified that in his opinion, based on the laws of genetics and heredity, two parents with type 0 blood cannot produce a child with type A blood.
According to Mendel’s Law of Hereditary Characteristics, two parents with type 0 blood cannot produce a child with type A blood. The validity of this scientific principle is accepted by the medical profession and among scientists generally. The medical profession apparently admits that, theoretically, due to possible mutation of the genes, two parents with type O blood might produce a child with type A blood in one out of 50,000 *155to 100,000 cases. See Comment, Conclusiveness of Blood Tests in Paternity Suits, 22 Md. L. Rev. 333 (1962), and cases cited; Comment, Blood Grouping Test Results: Evidential Fact or Conclusion of Law? 23 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 411 (1966), and cases cited. Notwithstanding this “theoretical exception,” when the quantum of proof required to convict is “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the possibility of error is so infinitesimal that the tests should be accepted as infallible when they exclude the defendant as the father of the child. The administration of justice is not aided by a rule of evidence, such as ours, which permits a jury in its unbridled discretion to ignore scientific facts and base its verdict on testimony which, according to Mendel’s Law, is false 49,999 out of every 50,000 times!
It is my view that Mendel’s Law of Hereditary Characteristics is so notoriously true as to exclude reasonable dispute and its accuracy and reliability has been demonstrated by readily accessible scientific sources of indisputable accuracy. This Court, therefore, may and should take judicial notice of the fact that two parents with type O blood cannot produce a child with type A blood. Kennedy v. Parrott, 243 N.C. 355, 90 S.E. 2d 754 (1956). The Court of Appeals so .held and I am in full accord with the well reasoned and fully documented opinion of that court. Whether the blood tests are properly administered and whether the results of the tests are truthfully reported to the court and jury, if disputed, are jury questions. The jury should have been instructed in this case, as the Court of Appeals held, “that under the laws of genetics and heredity a man and woman of blood group O cannot possibly have a child of blood group A and that if they believed the testimony of the doctor and believed that the tests were properly administered, it would be their duty to return a verdict of not guilty.”
For the reasons stated I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion which reverses the decision of the Court of Appeals and upholds the conviction of this defendant on the unsupported testimony of the mother and in the face of blood tests which, if properly administered and truthfully reported, show that defendant could not be the father of this child.
I am authorized to say that Mr. Justice HIGGINS joins in this dissent.