Summary
This Oregon Supreme Court decision addresses whether a law enforcement officer qualified as an expert improperly testified about hearsay regarding child vision development during a DUII trial. The court held that while experts may rely on out-of-court information under OEC 703, they cannot merely repeat another person's statements as substantive evidence for its truth. Finding that the trial court erred in admitting the challenged testimony and that the error was not harmless, the court reversed the defendant's convictions and remanded the case.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the trooper's testimony that alcohol could cause a person's vision to function like a baby's was inadmissible hearsay because it repeated an out-of-court assertion for its truth and exceeded the scope of the trooper's personal or specialized knowledge.
- Whether Oregon Evidence Code Rule 703 permitted the trooper to repeat the information as an explanation or basis for his expert opinion.
- Whether admission of the testimony was harmless error.
Holdings
- A witness qualified as an expert in a particular field may testify to specialized knowledge within the scope of that qualification, even if the knowledge was acquired through training or education. But the witness may not simply repeat another person's out-of-court assertion for its truth when the assertion concerns matters beyond the witness's own personal or specialized knowledge.
- The trooper's testimony about babies' peripheral vision and the asserted regression of an alcohol-impaired person's vision to that of a baby was hearsay because it repeated information learned from an ophthalmologist and was offered for the truth of the asserted proposition.
- The erroneous admission of the hearsay testimony was not harmless because the court could not say that there was little likelihood that the testimony affected the jury's verdict.
Key quotations
“those rules permit an expert’s testimony to be based in part on hearsay, but they do not permit an expert to simply repeat another’s out-of-court statement as substantive evidence offered for its truth.” (373 Or. at 215)
“Rule 703 does not “render otherwise inadmissible evidence admissible merely because it was the basis for the expert’s opinion.”” (373 Or. at 227)
“The assertions did not become any less hearsay when Wertz eventually repeated Citek’s assertions without explicitly describing them as what Citek “teaches” or “describes.”” (373 Or. at 231)
“we are unable to conclude that the erroneously admitted evidence, and the inferences that the jury could draw from it, “were unlikely to influence the jury’s verdict.”” (373 Or. at 237)
Factual background
An Oregon State Police trooper stopped Bowman after observing driving that, along with slurred speech and the odor of alcohol, suggested impairment. Bowman performed horizontal gaze nystagmus, walk-and-turn, and one-leg-stand field sobriety tests, and a later breath test showed a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent. The trooper, qualified as an expert in detecting impairment, testified that alcohol could cause a person's vision to regress to that of a baby, based on information learned from an ophthalmologist; the prosecutor relied on that comparison in closing argument.
Procedural history
The Lincoln County Circuit Court entered judgments of conviction after a jury trial. The Court of Appeals affirmed in a nonprecedential memorandum opinion. The Oregon Supreme Court allowed review, reversed the Court of Appeals and the circuit court judgment, and remanded for further proceedings.
Remand instructions
The circuit court must conduct further proceedings following reversal of the judgment of conviction. The opinion does not prescribe additional specific procedures.