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Reed v. Maryland9/6/1978
ndition to be that there must be 'general acceptance' of such newly discovered scientific principle, or new application of scientific principle, in the relevant scientific field." Id. at 503 (emphasis in original).
The Maine court "refuse to take th course," saying it "believe [this] would be at odds with the fundamental philosophy of [the Maine] Rules of Evidence, as revealed more particularly in Rules 402 and 702, generally favoring the admissibility of expert testimony whenever it is relevant and can be of assistance to the trier of fact." (Emphasis in original.)
Applying Romero's analysis to spectrographic voice identification, it would appear that there are sufficient indications of reliability to say that opinions based on the process are relevant. Critics of the technique admit that the process is "in some degree reliable." (Romero's threshold for admissibility.) The Bolt group said: "Under certain laboratory conditions and for some selected sample of the population, the probability of making an error in identification can be stated. [That rate of error is relatively low.] But for the less-than-ideal conditions encountered in forensic situations, the indications are that the probability of error will increase substantially." Bolt, Cooper, David, Denes, Pickett & Stevens, Letter to the editor -- Speaker identification by speech spectrograms: some further observations, 54 J. Acoustical Soc. of Am. 531, 533-34 (1973). In essence, the critics have said that the reliability of this identification process under ideal conditions has been demonstrated satisfactorily; whether the process would prove as reliable under adverse conditions was something not proven by the Tosi study. The Bolt group's criticism and concerns cannot be read as stating that the process is totally unreliable. The Maine court in State v. Williams, 388 A.2d at 504-05, said:
" one of the acoustical scientists who testified questioned as facts that recordings of different
human voices vary more in time, frequency and intensity than recordings of the same voice and that the spectrograph can accurately plot these variables. The opposition experts focused only on the difficulties of comparison and the exercise of judgment and the failure of the spectrograph experiments to account for many real world variables."
Certainly the limitations on the process should be considered by the trier of fact in determining the proper weight to be given this sort of testimony, but the limitations do not indicate that the spectrograph process is so unreliable that an opinion based on that process is irrelevant.
Professor Romero's view of the standard for admissibility of scientific evidence under the Federal Rules of Evidence, and the standard outlined by the Maine court in State v. Williams, 388 A.2d 500, are in accord with the cases discussed under part 2 of this opinion regarding ballistics and other scientific analysis, our prior Maryland cases involving expert testimony, and the standard put forth by Dean McCormick that " ny relevant conclusions which are supported by a qualified expert witness should be received . . . ."
7. Conclusion
I conclude that even under the Frye test the trial judge did not abuse his discretion in permitting the opinion testimony based upon spectrographic voice analysis. Given the instructions which he gave the jury, I see no possible basis for believing that jurors would by this testimony in some manner become biased against the accused. I think it obvious that a "minimal reserve of experts" is available. I do not believe that jurors in Montgomery County are any less intelligent or well informed than the juries before whom I
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