Summary
The Supreme Court of Missouri held that the circuit court erred by excluding expert testimony concerning factors affecting the reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Court concluded that Missouri Revised Statutes section 490.065.2, rather than prior cases applying the common-law standard, governed the admissibility of the testimony. It vacated Kane Carpenter’s robbery conviction and remanded the case for a new trial.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the circuit court abused its discretion by excluding expert testimony regarding scientific factors affecting the reliability and accuracy of eyewitness identifications.
- Whether section 490.065.2 superseded the common-law rule in State v. Lawhorn and its progeny requiring jurors to be incapable of reaching a proper conclusion without expert assistance.
- Whether the exclusion of the expert testimony prejudiced Carpenter and required a new trial.
- Whether the circuit court could uphold exclusion of the entire expert proffer because some proposed testimony concerned factors not expressly supported by evidence at the time of the proffer.
Holdings
- Section 490.065.2 controls the admissibility of expert testimony in criminal cases and abrogated Lawhorn, Taylor, and their progeny to the extent those cases applied a binary rule requiring jurors to be wholly incapable of reaching a proper conclusion without expert assistance.
- Expert testimony concerning scientifically established factors that affect the reliability and accuracy of eyewitness identifications is admissible when it satisfies section 490.065.2.
- Expert testimony about general factors affecting the accuracy and reliability of eyewitness identifications does not invade the province of the jury when the expert does not opine on the credibility or accuracy of the particular eyewitness.
- The availability of cross-examination, closing argument, and a generalized eyewitness-identification instruction does not make otherwise admissible expert testimony inadmissible.
- The exclusion of Dr. Lampinen's testimony was prejudicial because it deprived Carpenter of expert evidence addressing the central issue in a closely balanced case: whether the victim could be genuinely certain yet mistaken in identifying Carpenter.
Key quotations
“Those cases, which were decided as part of the common law of evidence in criminal cases, were abrogated in 2017 by the enactment of section 490.065.2.” (at 7)
“Under this statute, the only question is whether his testimony would help the jury understand and evaluate the eyewitness identification evidence in this case and consider the factors set forth in Instruction No. 9.” (at 10-11)
“The flaw in the state's argument (and with much of the reasoning in Lawhorn) is that it fails to distinguish between credibility and accuracy.” (at 11-12)
“Few cases are balanced on such a precarious edge and, because it was, the likelihood that the Dr. Lampinen’s testimony would have altered the outcome is simply too high to affirm this conviction.” (at 28)
Factual background
The victim was robbed at night by two young men, one of whom displayed what appeared to be a pistol and took the victim's phone and earbuds. Within minutes, police detained Carpenter and another young man near the reported escape route, found the victim's phone near Carpenter, and brought the victim to the scene for a one-person show-up identification. The victim identified Carpenter as the robber who threatened him, but the identification involved potentially suggestive circumstances, including darkness, a brief encounter, weapon-related distraction, a cross-racial identification, handcuffing, and police spotlighting. The victim later gave descriptions inconsistent with Carpenter's appearance, and no firearm was found.
Procedural history
A Cole County jury convicted Carpenter of one count of first-degree robbery. Before trial, the circuit court granted the State's motion to exclude Dr. James Lampinen's proposed expert testimony about eyewitness-identification reliability under State v. Lawhorn and State v. Whitmill. The Supreme Court of Missouri held that the exclusion was erroneous under section 490.065.2, found the error prejudicial, vacated the conviction, and remanded for a new trial.
Remand instructions
Vacate Carpenter's conviction and remand the matter to the circuit court for a new trial.