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Reed v. Maryland9/6/1978
dmission. The policy factors include such possibilities as misleading the jury or unduly prejudicing one party's position in the opinion of the jury. In considering such policy factors, the courts are weighing the prejudicial effect of admitting the evidence against the harm of excluding relevant evidence. Generally, the decision as to the wisdom of admitting or refusing the evidence is made according to the discretion of the trial judge." Id. at 393 (footnotes omitted).
Evidence which purports to be of a "scientific" character has been scrutinized carefully to insure that the evidence is sufficiently reliable to have some logical relevance to a material issue in the case. However, as will be seen from a review of cases considering other scientific developments of this century, scientific evidence has generally been admitted if supported by the testimony of a qualified expert. Although the lie detector cases have emphasized a need for "general acceptance in the particular field in which [the scientific principle] belongs," Frye, 293 F. at 1014, the focus in other cases considering some new development has been on
reasonable reliability, not general acceptance. In an early study of scientific evidence, Inbau, Scientific Evidence in Criminal Cases (I), 24 J. Crim. L. & C. 825 (1934), stated:
"Regardless of the justification for excluding evidence of a scientific nature, a court may assume either of two different attitudes -- one open-minded and perhaps hopeful of the possibilities of the particular science in question; the other somewhat bigoted and scornfully expressive of the utter hopelessness of scientific aid concerning the problem before the court. Throughout the numerous decisions upon the admissibility of scientific evidence there are many illustrations of both points of view." Id. at 826 (footnote omitted).
I shall not attempt to characterize the varying views accorded the testimony as to identification of voices by spectrographic analysis.
a. Fingerprints
Some critics of the spectrographic voice identification process have suggested that any new scientific technique should be shown to be as reliable as fingerprinting before a jury is allowed to consider such evidence. Today we accept as commonplace travel at speeds such that one may cross the continent in less than the time that it took even as late as the end of World War II to travel by automobile from Baltimore to New York City. There are even members of this Court, however, who can remember the time when it was equally commonplace for many farmers to come to town on Saturday night by horse and carriage, hitching their horses to conveniently placed hitching posts. A relatively short time
ago those who traveled by motor vehicle were able to cross the Chesapeake Bay only by boat. Many persons today have forgotten the travel methods of even a few years back. Fingerprinting has long been recognized as an extremely reliable method of identification. Just as we may be prone to forget changes in the field of transportation, we may forget that even this branch of forensic science had its infancy. "Fingerprinting came into widespread use in this country from about 1910 on, after some isolated experiments on a local level, beginning in 1902." A. Moenssens, et al., supra, 308. The process was admitted into evidence almost immediately. See generally Inbau, Scientific Evidence in Criminal Cases (III), 25 J. Crim. L. & C. 500 (1934).
Moenssens and Inbau indicate that the first appellate decision in this country considering fingerprint evidence was People v. Jennings, 252 Ill. 534, 96 N. E. 1077 (1911). Jennings was accused of murder at one home in conn
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