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The Frye Standard and Evidence Admissibility
People v Williams
NY Slip Op 02123
Decided on March 31, 2020
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Issue:
Admissibility of DNA Evidence Using Methods Not ‘Generally Accepted’ by Scientific Community
Whether the trial court should have held a Frye hearing with respect to the admissibility of low copy number (LCN) DNA evidence that, while not generally accepted as reliable by the relevant scientific community, linked defendant Cadman Williams to the gun involved in a fatal shooting.
Holding:
Trial Court Should Have Held a Frye Hearing Regarding the Evidence in Question
The Court of Appeals held that trial court did abuse its discretion in not holding a Frye hearing regarding the admissibility of the DNA evidence, but that the error was harmless and therefore the defendant’s judgment should not be disturbed.
Facts:
Defendant Cadman Williams was involved in a dispute with several teenagers that ended in the death of the victim from two fatal gunshot wounds. Defendant escaped the scene of the shooting and hid the weapon in the apartment of a former girlfriend, where it was recovered prior to prosecution. The People presented eyewitness testimony identifying defendant as the shooter, as well as video footage placing him at the scene of the crime. The former girlfriend also testified that Williams forced her to stow the gun in her apartment and that he admitted to her that “he had just shot somebody.”
The People also presented evidence with respect to DNA testing that was conducted on the subject gun. The testing revealed that there was a mixture of DNA from at least two contributors on the firearm. The NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) was unable to link defendant’s DNA profile of the DNA found on the gun through “standard” DNA testing. However, using a “sensitive” form of testing, that is LCN testing, and a proprietary forensic statistical tool (FST) or “calculator” developed by the OCME, the office concluded that it was “millions of times more likely that the DNA mixture found on the gun contained contributions from defendant and one unknown, unrelated person, rather than from two unknown, unrelated people.”
Prior to trial, defendant moved for an order precluding the People from introducing expert testimony regarding any conclusion reached by either the use of LCN testing or the FST on the ground that such methods were not generally accepted as reliable by the relevant scientific community. Defendant sought an order directing that a Frye hearing be held with respect to the reliability of the proposed evidence, providing expert averment that “no generally accepted guidelines for the testing, analysis, or interpretation of LCN [had] been agreed upon by the forensic community due to the unreliability of the LCN profiles generated.” The same expert did “not believe that profiles generated from LCN testing [were] reproducible, reliable or valid for the implementation for DNA testing associated with criminal casework.” Supplementing that expert submission were 10 scholarly articles questioning the validity and robustness of LCN analysis.
The People contended that the LCN evidence could be admitted without a Frye hearing because OCME had “submitted extensive validation studies detailing its protocols and procedures,” which had been examined and certified by the NY State Commission on Forensic Science. Regarding the FST evidence, the People maintained that “numerous articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals” supported the point that “the relevant scientific community had accepted the FST as reliable.”
At the time defendant’s motion was initiated, no court had completed a Frye hearing with respect to the FST issue and only one court—the Megnath (27 Misc 3d 405) court—had conducted such a hearing with respect to LCN testing. Nevertheless, the motion court denied defendant’s application in its entirety. Regarding the LCN issue, the court relied almost exclusively on Megnath, quoting that decision’s conclusion that LCN analysis is “basically the same method of DNA testing that occurs with [traditional high copy number review]” inasmuch as “the only difference [in approach] is that the LCN method can test smaller amounts of DNA by increasing the application cycles’” (id. At 410).
But the Kings County Supreme Court, following a lengthy Frye hearing in People v Collins, concluded that “neither LCN nor FST are generally accepted in the scientific community.” Prompted by this decision, defendant moved to renew/reargue the motion application, and once again the court denied the application and “simply declined to follow” Collins, instead relying on 10 trial-level decision in which “many of [the court’s] colleagues [had] similarly ruled.” Those decisions have the common touchstone of People v Megnath (27 Misc 3d 405 [Sup Ct, Queens County 2010]).
On appeal, the Appellate Division refused to disturb the trial court’s determination of the Frye motion, noting only that it had “considered and rejected defendant’s argument concerning [LCN] and [FST] evidence” (id. At 472-473, citing People v Gonzalez, 155 AD3d 507 [1st Dept 2017]
[relying on Megnath (27 Misc 3d at 413)]
.
Analysis:
Frye Standard for Admissibility of Evidence
The long-recognized rule of Frye is that “expert testimony based on scientific principles or procedures is admissible but only after a principle or procedure has gained acceptance’ in its specified field” (People v Wesley, 83 NY2d 417, 422 [1994], quoting Frye, 293 F at 1014). The process is meant to assess “whether the accepted techniques, when properly performed, generate results accepted as reliable within the scientific community generally” (People v Brooks, 31 NY3d 939, 941 [2018]). Unanimity is not required, but the proponent of the disputed evidence must show consensus in the scientific community as to the methodology’s reliability.
The determination of whether the trial court erred in admitting disputed scientific evidence in the absence of a Frye hearing turns on whether the court abused its discretion as a matter of law. The Court of Appeals held that the trial court did abuse its discretion in deciding not to evaluate the reliability of LCN evidence in a Frye hearing, by relying heavily on the prior judicial opinion in Megnath. That court had ruled, among other things, that LCN testing as performed by OCME was “generally accepted as reliable in the forensic scientific community” (Megnath, 27, Misc 3d 405). However, that conclusion was based on the court’s review of what was OCME’s “own, internal support for its process.” By the time the motion court in this case determined the application to renew or reargue, there were approximately 10 decisions of various trial courts of New York that purportedly supported the determination in this case. Underlying each of those decisions was the ruling in Megnath, and underlying the Megnath ruling was an analysis that did not adequately assess whether OCME’s LCN testing was generally accepted within the relevant scientific community.
The Court explained that the repetition of a single, questionable judicial determination does not strengthen or add validity to such a ruling. Scientific community approval is the litmus test for the admission of expert evidence generated from a scientific principle or procedure, and it is not to be assumed that one hearing is automatically “enough” to hurdle a Frye inquiry in a different matter. Significantly, the People were unable to cite any NY appellate cases, or out-of-state case law, assessing the general acceptance of LCN evidence (cf. People v Middleton, 54 NY2d 42, 49-50 [1981]; People v Magri, 3 NY2d 562, 566 [1958]), and “marked conflict” remains with respect to the reliability of LCN DNA within the relevant scientific community.
The Court concluded the same with respect to the FST evidence. The logic underlying the admission of FST evidence hinged on the “strength” of Garcia (39 Misc 3d 482) and the observation that FST technology basically uses the building blocks of existing mathematical formulas to calculate the likelihood that a person contributed to one part of a DNA mixture. But the point remains that FST is a proprietary program exclusively developed and controlled by OCME, which is not “an appropriate substitute for the thoughtful exchange of ideas…envisioned by Frye” (Wesley, 83 NY2d at 441), rather, it is an invitation to bias.
The Court held that the errors in admitting expert testimony regarding the LCN and FST results in the absence of a Frye hearing were significant, but that they were also harmless under its standard for error of non-constitutional magnitude. The People presented video evidence of the shooting, eyewitness testimony identifying defendant as the shooter, and the testimony of defendant’s former girlfriend accounting his handling of the subject gun. The Court concluded, therefore, that evidence of defendant’s guilt is overwhelming and that there is no significant probability that the jury would have acquitted the defendant had it not been for these errors (see generally People v Crimmins, 36 NY2d, 241-242 [1975]).