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State v. Fortin2/3/2004
of homicide. The database supported the authors' conclusion that the firearm is the most effective means of mass destruction and the "weapon of choice" in both mass-murder incidents and single victim crimes. Id. at 434-35. Surely if thousands of murder cases and hundreds of tests performed on bodily fluids can be tabulated in a database, the basic information for a database in this case can be compiled as well.
Hazelwood's database should have consisted of violent sexual assault cases that he had investigated, studied, or analyzed during his professional career, and the peculiar modus operandi and ritualistic characteristics of those crimes. Such a database would have provided some basis for verifying the frequency of sexual assaults in which perpetrators bite the faces or breasts of their victims, or manually strangle them, or engage in high risk attacks, to name but a few of the characteristics Hazelwood found distinctive in this case. If Hazelwood was correct about the unique combination of characteristics that the Gardner and Padilla assaults had in common, the database would have strengthened and validated his conclusions. The jury also was entitled to know if there were any flaws in his analysis.
We do not suggest that the database had to be comprised of all of the cases investigated, studied, or analyzed by Hazelwood, or even a majority of them. We understand that it might be overly burdensome or impossible to construct such a record if he were not keeping such records on a running basis and if he truly were denied access to the records by other law enforcement authorities. Hazelwood, however, holds himself out as an expert in this field and presumably has kept records for the purpose of conducting research, publishing articles and books, and presenting lectures. We believe that if he had the will to do so, he could provide some credible database for submission to the trial court.
The database, at a minimum, must permit an acceptable basis for comparison. We are not prepared on the present record to say what number of cases would constitute a sufficient database.
That determination we leave to the trial court, which must conduct a N.J.R.E. 104 hearing. At that hearing, the trial court must determine what number of cases can be reconfigured within reason and what number of case comparisons are necessary to give the opinion validity.
Accordingly, we conclude that the trial court committed reversible error in permitting Hazelwood to testify absent the production of a reliable database. On remand, the trial court will conduct a N.J.R.E. 104 hearing consistent with this opinion.
IV. Third-Party Guilt
Defendant contends that the trial court improperly barred him from introducing evidence that would have supported an argument that someone else 23af a third party 23af killed Melissa Padilla. Defendant sought to introduce evidence that Padilla had sold crack cocaine earlier on the day of her murder for the purpose of drawing the inference that her death was drug related. He also sought to show that unidentified sperm found in a vaginal swab from Padilla's body could not have come from defendant and, therefore, must have come from her killer. In both instances, the trial court found that there was no rational basis to support a theory of third-party guilt. We agree.
A.
The constitutional right to present a defense confers on the defendant the right to argue that someone else committed the crime. State v. Jimenez, 175 N.J. 475, 486 (2003); State v. Koedatich, 112 N.J. 225, 297 (1988) (Koedatich II), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 1017, 109 S.Ct. 813, 102 L.Ed. 2d 803 (1989). In this case, defendant's general d
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