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State v. Garrett12/1/2005
tworthiness. The trial court must "determine whether the reasoning or methodology underlying the scientific evidence is sufficiently valid and reliable, and whether it can properly be applied to the facts at issue." McDaniel, 955 S.W.2d at 258. The court must be satisfied that the expert "opinions are based on relevant scientific methods, processes, and data, and not upon an expert's mere speculation." Id. at 265.
The record does not reveal that the trial court abused its discretion in accepting Mr. Cooper as an expert and allowing him to offer his conclusions regarding the presence of a pour pattern in the front room of the defendant's house. The defendant argues that Mr. Cooper's testimony failed to establish a reliable scientific basis for his opinion that a pour pattern existed on the floor of the front room in the defendant's house. However, when viewing Mr. Cooper's testimony as a whole, we find that the court had a sufficient basis for allowing Mr. Cooper's testimony and accordingly did not abuse its discretion by admitting it. Mr. Cooper testified that he had been extensively trained in fire investigation, had investigated between 150 and 200 fires, and had instructed others in fire investigation. Mr. Cooper based his conclusion on his observation that the front room had suffered fire damage, whereas the other rooms in the house had only suffered smoke and heat damage. Moreover, Mr. Cooper determined the existence of a pour pattern in the front room based upon his experience of examining numerous fire scenes. He opined that radiant heat damage is often mistaken for a pour pattern by less experienced fire investigators but that his extensive experience allowed him to make that distinction and definitively identify the existence of a pour pattern in the defendant's front room. At trial, Mr. Cooper elaborated that he examined the baseboards in the defendant's front room because an accellerant will usually run under a baseboard. Under one baseboard he discovered a "V pattern," which is caused by an accellerated fire. Mr. Cooper testified that these individual conclusions formed the basis for his opinion that the defendant's house fire had been deliberately set.
As noted earlier in this opinion, defense counsel subjected Mr. Cooper to a rigorous cross-examination, in which he elicited, inter alia, that Mr. Cooper did not interview many of the witnesses personally despite his assertion that witness observations played a crucial role in his analysis of a fire scene, that Mr. Cooper did not observe the defendant's house before the booster-hose cleaning, and that he did not see the front furniture in its pre-fire position. During cross- examination, Mr. Cooper conceded that a pour pattern could be mimicked by a polyester meltdown, although Mr. Cooper insisted that he could distinguish between the two. Moreover, the defendant presented the testimony of his own expert, Stewart Bayne, who testified that the fire was accidental, unaided by accellerants.
Thus, we conclude that there was a sufficient indicia of reliability to support the trial court's decision to allow Mr. Cooper's expert testimony and that defense counsel's artful cross-examination of Mr. Cooper coupled with the defendant's presentation of a competing version of the fire's cause through the testimony of his own expert witness gave the jury ample opportunity to reject Mr. Cooper's testimony.
IV. Jury Instructions
The next issue that the defendant raises on appeal presents a compendium of complaints about the jury instructions that were and were not given at his trial. Before addressing these complaints, we begin with a brief overview of this case.
The offense for which the defendant
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