Court Opinion

ID: 9719357
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:49:47.444373+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:06.500588
License: Public Domain

MIKELL, Judge,
concurring and concurring specially.
I concur with all that is said in the majority opinion. I write separately only to emphasize that Johnson v. State,13 authored by current Supreme Court of Georgia Chief Justice Hunstein, held unequivocally that the admission of expert testimony as to the accuracy of eyewitness evidence is within the sound discretion of the trial court, whose discretion will not be disturbed on appeal absent clear abuse.14 I also wish to point out that such expert testimony is problematic and generally unnecessary.
Johnson does not stand for the proposition that, whenever there is no evidence corroborating the eyewitness identification, the trial court must admit the expert testimony to assist the jury. Rather, Johnson states that when no substantial corroborating evidence existed, the trial judge should “carefully weigh” whether the expert testimony would assist the jury.15 Johnson implies that the trial judge retains the discretion to exclude the expert testimony provided that the judge has carefully considered the matter. In the case at bar, the *280trial court’s order reflects that the court did consider the matter and “carefully weigh” whether the expert testimony would assist the jury. Therefore, as decreed in the unanimous decision in Johnson,16 the matter was squarely within the discretion of the learned and experienced trial judge.
Although purporting to rely on Johnson, the dissent nonetheless holds that the trial court abused its discretion not to admit the expert testimony. An appellate court should not feign allegiance to the rule that a matter is within the trial court’s sound discretion and then find an abuse of discretion whenever it disagrees with the trial judge’s decision. Such unbridled appellate “review” is nothing but a de novo consideration, from a cold record, of the evidence seen and heard by the trial court. It is not permitted by our Supreme Court. “Johnson . . . stresses that these decisions are within the sound discretion of the trial court.”17
In the case at bar, there is some evidence corroborating the eyewitness identification. The two men stopped by the police shortly after the crime was committed happened to be the only two men on the streets in that neighborhood around 3:50 a.m. The evidently clear-headed witness recalled that the man with the shotgun seemed to be talking in an artificially low voice, that is to say, in the voice that might be affected by a young man trying to seem older. Such subjective evidence is some corroboration of the eyewitness’s claim that Frazier, who was 16 years old at the time of the crime, was the man with the shotgun.
Irregularities in eyewitness perception and memory generally are not beyond the ken of the average juror. Juries are aware that a victim’s attention may be distracted from a perpetrator’s face by the fact that the perpetrator is brandishing a menacing handgun, or in the case at bar, a menacing shotgun. Jurors also understand the difference between an identification made in a photographic lineup two weeks after the crime and one made by the eyewitness shortly after the police locate the perpetrator, based on the witness’s description, near the crime scene. Although these are not matters to which jurors turn much attention in their daily lives, they are directed in their evaluation of the evidence at trial by opening statements and closing arguments as well as the pattern jury charge on identification.18 If we allow experts to tell juries that eyewitness *281testimony is “inherently,” i.e., always, unreliable,19 then juries will start insisting on videotape and DNA evidence in prosecutions of life-threatening crimes, when such evidence will often be unavailable. For these reasons, ruling that a jury cannot evaluate eyewitness identification without the aid of an expert witness is problematic.
Finally, such expert testimony is generally unnecessary. A careful review of Brodes III demonstrates this point. As recounted in that opinion, the expert witness testified that (1) the presence of a gun during the commission of a robbery creates a highly stressful situation, decreasing the witness’s ability to “perceive and remember,” and (2) the relationship between the witness’s level of confidence in his or her identification and the accuracy thereof is not “good.”20 Nevertheless, the juries in both the first trial of Bodre Brodes,21 and his retrial22 reached the same verdict with and without the aid of an expert witness.

 272 Ga. 254 (526 SE2d 549) (2000).

 Id. at 257 (1). Accord Howard v. State, 286 Ga. 222, 228 (4) (686 SE2d 764) (2009); Davis v. State, 286 Ga. 74, 77-78 (3) (686 SE2d 249) (2009); Manley v. State, 284 Ga. 840, 845-846 (3) (672 SE2d 654) (2009); Jones v. State, 273 Ga. 213, 216-217 (3) (539 SE2d 143) (2000); Johnson v. State, 271 Ga. 375, 382 (12) (519 SE2d 221) (1999).

 Johnson, supra, 272 Ga. at 257.

 Id.

 Manley, supra at 846 (3), n. 5.

 The pattern charge is an. accurate statement of the law after the Supreme Court removed the misleading statement that juries could consider the level of certainty shown by the witness in his or her identification. See Brodes v. State, 279 Ga. 435, 442 (614 SE2d 766) (2005) (“Brodes III”); Suggested Pattern Jury Instructions, Vbl. II: Criminal Cases, § 1.35.10 *281(2007). There can be further changes to the suggested charge if experience and science warrant them. The absence of any correlation between the accuracy of the eyewitness’s identification and the level of certainty may be the only counterintuitive matter about which these expert witnesses testify.

 See Jones, supra at 218 (3) (a) (holding that “although expert testimony may be admissible under Johnson to demonstrate the general lack of a correlation between confidence and accuracy,” the studies upon which the defendant relied “do not render every eyewitness’s testimony regarding his or her confidence inherently unreliable and inadmissible”) (footnote omitted).

 Brodes III, supra at 438.

 Brodes v. State, 250 Ga. App. 323 (551 SE2d 757) (2001) (“Brodes I”), cert. denied, State v. Brodes, 2002 Ga. LEXIS 152.

 Brodes v. State, 268 Ga. App. 895 (602 SE2d 895) (2004) (“Brodes II”), rev’d, Brodes III, supra.