Court Opinion

ID: 9739605
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:18:22.2435+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:13.137072
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Judge,
concurring.
excluded this public opinion poll. I agree that the trial court erroneously As a *1192matter of law, the positioning of Question # 18 did not adversely affect the accuracy of this poll. Therefore, the particular dispute between the experts here as to the accuracy of the poll could not legitimately serve as a basis for excluding the poll.1
However, I must disagree with the majority's distinction between admissibility of evidence of this nature and the weight to be attributed to such evidence.
As the majority herein acknowledges, a poll is admissible if circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness are present. The majority further acknowledges that the foundational requirements for the admissibility of a poll must be established and may not be assumed. My agreement with this premise prompts my separate opinion.
Establishment of the foundational requirements is essential to the determination of admissibility. Failure to establish those requirements must result in exclusion of the evidence. This threshold determination must be made by the trial court. The determination as to the presence of those guarantees of trustworthiness necessarily falls to the trial court in its ruling as to admissibility. The guarantees therefore affect admissibility in the first instance, even though those same factors thereafter might be considered by a jury in assessing the weight to be given the poll. Nevertheless, the trial court must resolve the question in the first instance and may not avoid the issue upon the premise that those factors go only to the weight of the evidence.
Admissibility is within the sole prerogative of the trial judge. The fact that the disagreement which must be resolved may be within the peculiar realm of the experts does not alter the nature of the determination from one of admissibility to one of the weight to be given the poll. The trial judge under such cireumstances cannot avoid the duty to make a determination as to admissibility even though that determination requires him to weigh the conflicting testimony of two experts.
It may be that matters of this sort are similar to the process followed to determine admissibility of a confession in a criminal case. See Long v. State (1981) Ind., 422 N.E.2d 284 in conjunction with Tanner v. State (1984) Ind., 471 N.E.2d 665.
In any event, I disagree with the implication that once a proponent of evidence has qualified as an expert and has stated that his poll is accurate, such poll must be admitted into evidence.2
The majority would seem to require that the poll be admitted no matter how inadequate the validating procedures, so long as the expert states, that in Ais opinion, the procedures were adequate to establish trustworthiness.
In these aspects of the majority opinion, I find fault, although I agree with the conclusion that this poll was admissible.3

. In the case before us, the experts disagree with respect to whether one of the foundational requirements has been met. In essence, the disa-" greement between Drs. Bell and Vargas is whether the circumstantial evidence of trust worthiness has been sufficiently established to permit the poll to be admitted and to be weighed by the jury. Reduced to its barest essentials the experts are in disagreement with respect to whether the poll is admissible or not.

. The majority would seem to permit the expert to validate his own methodology by merely opining that he has complied with the seven requirements enumerated at pages 1187-88 of the opinion.

. In holding this public opinion poll admissible, I do not believe the majority may properly avoid outright rejection of Richards v. State (1984) 3d Dist., Ind.App., 461 N.E.2d 744, and Sedelbauer v. State (1983) 3d Dist., Ind.App., 455 N.E.2d 1159. See Majority Opinion, p. 1189, n. 12. In holding that no expert testimony is permitted with respect to establishment of a community standard, those cases necessarily preclude the expert testimony necessary to provide a foundation for an opinion poll which might establish the community standard. The import of Richards and Sedelbauer is that the applicable community standard may be established solely by each jury upon a case-by-case basis.