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Ragsdale v. State6/1/2001
expert witness to testify. As the supreme court recently explained in Barrett v. Era Aviation, Inc.,
As a general rule, the trial judge retains "wide latitude" in deciding whether to admit the testimony of an expert witness. In Lewis v. State[, 469 P.2d 689, 695-96 (Alaska 1970)], we held that the test for reversible abuse of discretion was "whether the reasons for the exercise of discretion are clearly untenable or unreasonable," noting that reasonableness [of the judge's decision] depended on whether the trial judge balanced "the value of the evidence against the danger of undue prejudice, distraction of the jury from the issues, and waste of time." 996 P.2d 101, 103-04 (Alaska 2000) (footnotes omitted).
In Ragsdale's case, Judge Jahnke clearly applied this balancing test when he ruled that Dixon would not be allowed to testify. As explained above, Judge Jahnke repeatedly expressed the concern that Dixon's testimony would only lead the jury into baseless speculation as to whether the victim in this case might have experienced an alcoholic blackout. The judge pointed out that Dixon did not claim to have expertise "in diagnosing [alcoholic] blackout [or in] differentiating [alcoholic] blackout from other phenomena". Thus, Judge Jahnke concluded, if Dixon was allowed to take the stand and explain the definition of alcoholic blackout, he would not be able to "explain to the jurors what the significance [of this evidence] might be".
As we noted above, Ragsdale's attorney disclaimed any intention of having Dixon testify about "whether or not [the victim] was in an alcoholic blackout on the day in question, or anything about this particular case". This being so, the only foreseeable result of Dixon's proposed testimony would be to lead the jury into groundless speculation. Both Evidence Rule 403 and the supreme court's decision in Barrett call upon trial judges to prevent this from happening, and Judge Jahnke was quite properly trying to forestall this result in Ragsdale's case.
We therefore conclude that even if Dixon conceivably qualified as an expert on the various definitions of "alcoholic blackout", Judge Jahnke nevertheless did not abuse his discretion under Evidence Rule 403 when he refused to let Dixon testify about these definitions.
Ragsdale asserts that Judge Jahnke's ruling deprived him of his constitutional right to present a defense. But we have repeatedly held that a trial judge's proper application of Evidence Rule 403 does not violate a defendant's right to present a defense or to confront the witnesses against them. We reach the same conclusion here.
Conclusion
The judgment of the superior court is AFFIRMED.
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