Summary
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the admission of TrueAllele probabilistic genotyping evidence under Daubert and Federal Rule of Evidence 702 in a federal firearm-possession prosecution. The court held that the government established the methodology’s testability, low error rates, governing standards, peer review, and general acceptance, and that disclosure of TrueAllele’s source code was not required for admissibility. The court also rejected the defendant’s Second Amendment and sentencing arguments.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the District Court properly admitted or found admissible TrueAllele probabilistic-genotyping evidence under Daubert and Federal Rule of Evidence 702.
- Whether Daubert or Rule 702 required the government to disclose TrueAllele's source code to permit testing of the methodology.
- Whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) violated the Second Amendment facially or as applied to Anderson, who was on state parole.
- Whether the District Court abused its discretion by imposing a 78-month sentence consecutive to an anticipated state sentence under U.S.S.G. § 5G1.3(d).
Holdings
- The government established by a preponderance of the evidence that TrueAllele's probabilistic-genotyping methodology was sufficiently reliable for admission under Rule 702. Its testability, low error rates, governing standards, peer review, and general acceptance supported the District Court's reliability determination.
- Daubert and Rule 702 did not require the government to disclose TrueAllele's complete source code where the defense had access to the algorithm, testing opportunities, validation materials, other relevant software, and substantial disclosures sufficient to test the methodology objectively.
- Anderson's as-applied Second Amendment challenge was foreclosed because he was serving a state-law parole term when arrested, and that foreclosed his facial challenge as well.
- The District Court did not abuse its discretion by imposing a 78-month within-Guidelines federal sentence consecutive to any sentence imposed for Anderson's state-law parole violation.
Key quotations
“TrueAllele may not be perfect, but most science is not. TrueAllele’s probabilistic genotyping methodology has adequate scientific foundations to be used in federal trials.” (3-4)
“But Daubert is not a criminal discovery device.” (12)
“The government demonstrated that TrueAllele was generally accepted in the relevant scientific community, which was all that was necessary at the Daubert hearing.” (20)
Factual background
During execution of a search warrant, Pennsylvania State Police seized a gun from a bag containing Anderson's identification and two loaded magazines; Anderson was in the same bedroom and was serving a term of state parole. A state crime laboratory found a multi-source DNA mixture on the gun but could not determine whether Anderson's DNA matched it to a stated degree of scientific certainty. Cybergenetics used TrueAllele to compare the processed DNA profiles and calculated a likelihood ratio of 11.5 trillion, indicating that the mixture was much more likely to include Anderson's DNA than the DNA of a random Caucasian.
Procedural history
The Middle District of Pennsylvania denied Anderson's motion to exclude TrueAllele probabilistic-genotyping evidence under Daubert and Federal Rule of Evidence 702, denied his facial and as-applied Second Amendment challenges to § 922(g)(1), and later accepted his guilty plea. The District Court sentenced him to 78 months' imprisonment, consecutive to an anticipated state sentence for a parole violation. The Third Circuit affirmed.