STATE v. WARNER
12/26/1967
a technically admissible question was excluded but also that the answer, if admitted, would have been favorable to the appellant. As the record does not show what the witness' answer would have been we do not know whether the defendant was or was not prejudiced by the ruling of the justice and we cannot substitute conjecture. State v. Rist, 130 Me. 163, 166, 154 A. 178 (1931); State v. Dow, 122 Me. 448, 120 A. 427 (1923); State v. Wombolt, 126 Me. 351, 138 A. 527 (1927); Glassman, Maine Practice, Sec. 26:16; Beauregard v. Benjamin F. Smith Co., 213 Mass. 259, 100 N.E. 627, 45 L.R.A.,N.S., 200 (1913); Cook v. Enterprise Transportation Co., 197 Mass. 7, 10, 83 N.E. 325 (1907).
In any event we find no error on the part of the presiding justice in ruling that the witness' qualifications to answer these questions had not been proved.
The witness was a body shop foreman who had testified in court numerous times as an expert on the cost of repairs to motor vehicles damaged in accidents. He agreed, however, in answer to a question from defendant's counsel that he had never testified in court "about what forces of impact have what results on a certain automobile."
"Whether a witness called as an expert possesses the requisite
qualifications to enable him to testify, is a preliminary
question to be decided by the court. That decision must be
final and conclusive, unless it is made clearly to appear from
the evidence that it was not justified, or that it was based
upon some error in law." Marston v. Dingley, 88 Me. 546,
34 A. 414 (1896); State v. Libby, 153 Me. 1, 8, 133 A.2d 877 (1957);
State v. Wardwell, 158 Me. 307, 183 A.2d 896 (1962).
The witness was qualified in the field of repairing and estimating the cost of repairing motor vehicles. However, here the excluded questions called for answers involving the expected results of the application of certain forces in certain manners. It had not been demonstrated that he possessed a training or experience in that area of the principles of physics which would qualify him to answer.
Point No. 13. "The court erred in refusing to admit into evidence parts of the deposition of Sadie Kanaris."
Some time after Mrs. Charity's death a complaint issued in District Court No. 12 in Somerset County charging this defendant with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor in Fairfield at the time he was apprehended there by Officer Nelson. The judge of that court ordered Mrs. Kanaris' deposition taken in that Somerset County case.
There was no error by the justice in refusing to admit into evidence in a reckless homicide trial in Kennebec County parts of Mrs. Kanaris' deposition taken in a
Point No. 19. "The court erred in failing to order the jury not to read or listen to accounts of the trial in news media."
At the close of the third day of the trial the defendant's counsel addressed the court:
"MR. LEVINE: Your Honor, would it be appropriate for the jury
to be asked not to read any stories or listen to any reports of
this trial?"
The justice responded in this manner:
"THE COURT: I have cautioned them in that vein, Mr. Levine.
You understand there may be news reports and I again only
suggest and direct you not to read it. There may be just
excerpts from the testimony to cause you to think one way or
another concerning that testimony, so keep yourselves free of
any reading of it as well as anything else. We will adjourn
until tomorrow morning at 9:30."
We are satisfied that the language above quoted was understood by the jury
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