People v. Young

• Decision Date: 09 May 2006
• Citation: 7 N.Y.3d 40,850 N.E.2d 623
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Rudolph YOUNG, Appellant.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

850 N.E.2d 623

7 N.Y.3d 40

The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Rudolph YOUNG, Appellant.

Court of Appeals of New York.

May 9, 2006.

Muldoon & Getz, Rochester (Gary Muldoon of counsel), for appellant.

Michael C. Green, District Attorney, Rochester (Kelly Christine Wolford of counsel), for respondent.

OPINION OF THE COURT

R.S. SMITH, J.

The main issue is whether the trial court abused its discretion when it refused to allow an expert to testify about factors that affect the reliability of eyewitness identifications. The question is close, and the testimony might well have been admitted, but we conclude that there was no abuse of discretion.

Facts and Procedural History

In 1991, an intruder, concealing most of his body under a blanket and wearing a scarf over the lower part of his face, entered the home of William and Lisa Sykes and demanded money. He held an axe over the head of Mr. Sykes, who was in a wheelchair, and threatened to kill him. The Sykeses, accompanied by the intruder, looked for and found their wallets and turned over their cash. The intruder also took several watches from the top of their dresser. The Sykeses later found that other property, including binoculars and a pair of gloves, was missing from their cars.

Mrs. Sykes estimated that the intruder was in the house for from five to seven minutes. She said that she observed him intently in ample light, but acknowledged that she saw only part of his face and retained a "mental image" only of his eyes. The intruder was black; Mrs. Sykes is white. On the day of the crime, Mrs. Sykes told police she would not be able to help in preparing a "composite" sketch of the robber.

Defendant was arrested about a month after the event. Mr. Sykes never identified him as the robber, but Mrs. Sykes — after failing to recognize his picture in a photo array — picked him out of a lineup at which she both saw him and heard his voice. At defendant's first trial, Mrs. Sykes testified to her lineup identification. Defendant was convicted, but the conviction was reversed because certain evidence, including the lineup identification, was held to be the result of an arrest without probable cause (People v. Young, 255 A.D.2d 905, 683 N.Y.S.2d 677 [1998]).

In 1999, before defendant was retried, the trial court held an "independent source" hearing, and found that Mrs. Sykes was able to identify defendant as the robber based on her observations at the time of the crime. At the retrial, Mrs. Sykes made an in-court identification.

The People also put in evidence at the retrial the binoculars and the gloves that had been missing from the Sykeses' cars. These were obtained by the police a month after the crime from two women, both acquaintances of defendant. One of the women testified that she had received the binoculars from defendant, along with watches similar to those stolen from the Sykeses. The other woman testified that she did not know how the gloves came to be in her house; she had had many house guests, of whom defendant was one.

Defendant sought to present at the retrial the testimony of John Brigham, a professor of psychology who had studied factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. In a proffer outside the presence of the jury, Brigham made the general statement that "eyewitness identification memories" are "a ... difficult kind of memory . . . a kind of memory that people are not good at; that is, recognizing the faces of strangers."

Brigham also listed a number of factors that can make eyewitness identifications more or less accurate. Some, he acknowledged, are obvious — for example, the witness's opportunity to observe — but others are less so. Among the factors Brigham mentioned were that people are generally more accurate in identifying people of their own race than of another race; that, where a crime is committed with a weapon, the victim's tendency to focus on the weapon may interfere with his or her observation of the criminal; that a stressful experience is more likely to be a memorable one up to "a moderate level of stress," but that events generating "higher levels of stress" are remembered less well; and that there is "only a very weak relationship" between a witness's confidence in the accuracy of his or her recollection and its true accuracy — i.e., that people very confident in their recollections are often wrong. After hearing the proffer, the trial court ruled that the evidence would be excluded in the exercise of its discretion.

Defendant was again convicted of robbery and burglary. The Appellate Division affirmed the conviction, two Justices dissenting on the ground that the People failed to establish an independent source for Mrs. Sykes's identification testimony. We now affirm.

Discussion

Defendant first argues that the trial court's "independent source" finding, which the Appellate Division affirmed, was wrong as a matter of law. His argument, essentially, is that, considering Mrs. Sykes's limited view of the robber, and the long lapse of time and the many intervening events — including the photo array and the lineup — between the crime and the independent source hearing, it was impossible to find by the requisite clear and convincing evidence that the lineup would not influence her in-court identification (see United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 240, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 [1967]; People v. Ballott, 20 N.Y.2d 600, 606, 286 N.Y.S.2d 1, 233 N.E.2d 103 [1967]). The argument has force — indeed, it persuaded two Appellate Division Justices — but Supreme Court and the Appellate Division majority rejected it. In doing so they resolved an issue of fact. There is support in the record for their finding, and we may not disturb it (see People v. Malloy, 55 N.Y.2d 296, 300, 449 N.Y.S.2d 168, 434 N.E.2d 237 [1982]).

The harder question is whether the trial court abused its discretion in excluding Brigham's testimony. In People v Lee, 96 N.Y.2d 157, 726 N.Y.S.2d 361, 750 N.E.2d 63 [2001] (decided after the trial court's ruling in this case), we held that the decision to admit or exclude evidence of this sort is a discretionary one. We said that although "jurors may be familiar from their own experience with factors relevant to the reliability of eyewitness observation and identification, it cannot be said that psychological studies regarding the accuracy of an identification are within the ken of the typical juror" (id. at 162, 726 N.Y.S.2d 361, 750 N.E.2d 63). Thus, there are cases in which testimony like Brigham's may be admitted, in the exercise of the court's discretion; and indeed, there are cases in which it would be an abuse of discretion to exclude such evidence. This case is undoubtedly in the former category — the trial court here might well have admitted Brigham's testimony — but we conclude that it is not in the latter; the trial court's ruling was within the bounds of its discretion.

In reaching this conclusion, we consider two factors: the extent to which the research findings discussed by Brigham were relevant to Mrs. Sykes's identification of defendant; and the extent to which that identification was corroborated by other evidence. The first of these factors favors the admission of the testimony — so much so that, if the identification were not strongly corroborated, the exclusion of Brigham's testimony would be hard to justify. But the corroboration was strong enough for the trial court reasonably to conclude that the expert's testimony would be of minor importance.

As we made clear in Lee, a court's exercise of discretion in a case like this depends in large part on whether the "specialized knowledge" of the expert can give jurors more perspective than they get from "their day-to-day experience, their common observation and their knowledge" (id., quoting People v. Cronin, 60 N.Y.2d 430, 433, 470 N.Y.S.2d 110, 458 N.E.2d 351 [1983]). In other words, could the expert tell the jury something significant that jurors would not ordinarily be expected to know already? Here, we think the answer is yes.

Admittedly, some parts of Brigham's testimony concerned things jurors would not need an expert to tell them. It does not require scientific research, for example, to establish that an identification is more reliable when the witness's original opportunity to observe was good. But some of Brigham's other observations are, as he put it, "counter-intuitive" — or, at least not so obvious or well known that ordinary jurors would not benefit from hearing them. And in cases that depend solely or heavily on eyewitness testimony, jurors may also find it useful to know Brigham's general conclusion that human recollection of the faces of strangers is, on the whole, rather poor.

Certainly, Brigham's testimony could have been valuable to a juror in this case in assessing Mrs. Sykes's testimony. Having seen only part of the offender's face, and really remembering only his eyes, under conditions of high stress and with the terrifying distraction, part of the time, of an axe held over her husband's head, she nevertheless identified defendant with complete — and, unquestionably, sincerely felt — confidence. Brigham's testimony might have helped the jury in deciding whether that confidence was misplaced. Of course, that decision was for the jury, not Brigham, to make. His findings might have been undermined on cross-examination or refuted by other evidence, and even if they were not it would have been for the jury to decide what weight, if any, to give them. But if this case turned entirely on an uncorroborated eyewitness identification, it might well have been an abuse of discretion to deny the jury the benefit of Brigham's opinions.

The corroborating evidence, however, significantly diminishes the importance of the proffered expert testimony in this case — as it did in Lee, where we affirmed a conviction arising out of a carjacking, despite the exclusion of expert testimony like that...