Rhomer v. State

• Decision Date: 30 January 2019
• Docket Number: NO. PD-0448-17,PD-0448-17
• Parties: William RHOMER, Appellant v. The STATE of Texas
• Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

569 S.W.3d 664

William RHOMER, Appellant

v.The STATE of Texas

NO. PD-0448-17

Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.

Delivered: January 30, 2019

OPINION

Keel, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which Keller, P.J., and Keasler, Hervey, Richardson, Yeary, Newell, and Slaughter, JJ., joined.

A jury convicted Appellant of felony murder for causing the death of another while committing felony driving while intoxicated, and it sentenced him to seventy-five years in prison. The court of appeals affirmed. We granted Appellant's petition for discretionary review to decide whether an accident reconstruction expert can testify about a specific type of accident reconstruction in which he has no formal training and whether accident reconstruction should be governed by the Kelly or Nenno test for evaluating the reliability of the expert testimony. Kelly v. State , 824 S.W.2d 568 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992) ; Nenno v. State , 970 S.W.2d 549, 560 (Tex. Crim. App. 1998), overruled on other grounds by State v. Terrazas , 4 S.W.3d 720 (Tex. Crim. App. 1999). We affirm the judgment of the court of appeals.

I. Background

A. Relevant Facts

i. The Accident

Appellant left a bar shortly before 3:00 a.m. and drove his car eastbound on Nakoma Drive. The decedent, Gilbert Chavez, was riding his motorcycle in the westbound lane of Nakoma Drive. As both Appellant and Chavez approached the intersection of Nakoma Drive and Colwick Street from opposite directions, the vehicles collided. Mario Negron and Kenneth Ferrer testified that they were driving in the westbound lane of Nakoma Drive around 3:00 a.m. when they came upon the accident. Both testified to driving through the debris of the accident.

Negron and Ferrer saw Chavez was badly injured and lying near his motorcycle, and they called for help. They saw Appellant at the scene stumbling near his car which had crashed into a building. When police officers arrived, Appellant told them that Chavez had driven into his lane of traffic; he later told one of the officers that Chavez had pulled out in front of him as if Chavez had been traveling in the same direction as Appellant and had hit Appellant on the right side.

Chavez was taken to the hospital where he later died from his injuries. Dr. Randy Frost, the Bexar County Chief Medical Examiner, testified the injuries were consistent with an automobile accident, and multiple traumatic blunt force injuries were the cause of death.

ii. Detective Doyle's Testimony

Detective John Doyle was assigned to the San Antonio Police Department's Traffic Investigation Detail. In his twenty-three years as a police officer, he had investigated at least a thousand vehicular crashes and had testified once as an accident reconstruction expert in a case that involved two cars and a pickup truck. To qualify for his position in SAPD's Traffic Investigation Detail, Doyle attended three courses related to vehicle collisions. Doyle learned the basics of crash investigation – including "skid to stop" formulas, diagram drawing and scene measurement – in an intermediate crash investigation course. He later attended an advanced course at Texas A & M University where he learned how to conduct an "energy analysis" to calculate speed. Doyle also took a reconstruction course and courses on accidents involving pedestrians and bicycles. He testified that his accident reconstruction course work totaled 501 hours.

Doyle never took a course specifically related to motorcycle accident reconstruction and testified that he did not know of one offered in Texas. He admitted that there are "different physics, different science, [and] different mathematical principles" when evaluating a crash that involves two cars versus a crash that involves a car and a motorcycle. He testified, however, that the differences typically have to do with speed calculations and that the "basic facts" of an accident are still the same.

At the accident scene, Doyle observed Appellant's car crashed into a building and Chavez's motorcycle lying in the adjacent parking lot. Doyle did a visual inspection of the debris, tire marks and vehicular damage. He then used a precision surveying tool, a Sokkia instrument, to map the locations of the vehicles, debris, curb strikes and scrapes, and the dimensions and curvature of the road. Using these measurements, Doyle created a diagram of the accident that showed the spacial relationship between all of the pieces of evidence at the scene of the accident. Doyle could not calculate the speed of the vehicles at the time of the collision due to the huge weight differential between the car and the motorcycle and due to Appellant's car having crashed into a building without displacing it.

Detective Doyle observed a debris field in the westbound lane of Nakoma Drive that included pieces of Chavez's motorcycle. The debris was in front of the area of impact because the momentum of the debris carried it in the direction in which the motorcycle was traveling at the time of impact. There was no debris in Appellant's lane. There was no pre-impact braking by either the motorcycle or the car. There were three curb strikes and two scrape marks between the resting place of the motorcycle and the resting place of the car. Appellant's car sustained damage on its front left corner because the motorcycle struck the car's wheel well. Part of Appellant's front bumper was lodged in the cooling fins on the left side of Chavez's motorcycle.

On impact the motorcycle and Chavez "took two different paths" with the motorcycle pushed up and backwards while Chavez went over and beside the car, flinging bodily tissue onto it from the gaping wound

in his leg and leaving a trail of hand prints in the dust on the car.

Doyle formed the opinion that the wreck was "more or less" a head-on collision:

Basically that the vehicle driven by the defendant straightened out the cur[ve], hit the motorcycle in the – his traffic lane, in the oncoming traffic lane. The motorcyclist was struck by the left front corner of the car. He went over the car and the vehicle was – motorcycle was pushed backwards into the parking lot. The vehicle continued on in its same direction resulting in ultimately the death of the complainant.

Appellant's failure to negotiate the curve was consistent with alcohol impairment. Doyle testified, "That's one of the very, very common factors in alcohol-related crashes is failing to negotiate a curve, basically straightening out a curve, very common." He concluded that Appellant caused the crash due to alcohol intoxication. He dismissed Appellant's alternative, on-scene claims that Chavez came up from behind him and hit him on his right or crossed into Appellant's lane; Doyle found those scenarios to be inconsistent with the physical evidence that he observed.

B. Issues Presented

This Court granted review to resolve three issues raised by Appellant. First, did the court of appeals violate Texas Rule of Evidence 702 in affirming the trial court's decision to admit Doyle's expert testimony though he had no qualifications in motorcycle accident reconstruction? Second, in relying on Nenno instead of Kelly , did the court of appeals apply the wrong standard when deciding that Doyle's testimony was reliable even though he applied no scientific theory or testing from the field of accident reconstruction and had no qualifications in the field of motorcycle accident reconstruction? Third, should the Nenno standard apply when an expert in a technical scientific field chooses not to apply the scientific testing or theory to a particular case? We reject the premises that Doyle had no qualifications and chose to apply no scientific theory or testing. We hold that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting Doyle's expert testimony; the Nenno standard was applicable under the circumstances of this case; and Doyle's testimony was reliable. Consequently, we affirm the judgment of the court of appeals.

C. Standard of Review

An appellate court reviews a trial court's ruling on the admission of evidence for an abuse of discretion. Rodgers v. State , 205 S.W.3d 525, 527 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006) ; Powell v. State , 63 S.W.3d 435, 438 (Tex. Crim. App. 2001). The trial court abuses its discretion when it acts without reference to any guiding rules and principles or acts arbitrarily or unreasonably. Montgomery v. State , 810 S.W.2d 372, 380 (Tex. Crim. App. 1990).

II. Analysis

A. Expert Witness Testimony

An expert witness may offer an opinion if he is qualified to do so by his knowledge, skill, experience, training or education and if scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact in understanding the evidence or determining a fact in issue. TEX. R. EVID. 702. Witnesses who are not experts may testify about their opinions or inferences when those opinions or inferences are rationally based on the perception of the witnesses and helpful to a clear understanding of the witnesses' testimony or the determination of a fact in issue. TEX. R. EVID. 701. There is no distinct line between lay opinion and expert opinion. Osbourn v. State , 92 S.W.3d 531, 537 (Tex. Crim. App. 2002).

Three requirements must be met before expert testimony can be admitted: "(1) The witness qualifies as an expert by reason of his knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education; (2) the subject matter of the testimony is an appropriate one for expert testimony; and (3) admitting the expert testimony will actually assist the fact-finder in deciding the case." Vela v. State , 209 S.W.3d 128, 131 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006). These conditions are commonly referred to as (1) qualification, (2) reliability, and (3) relevance. The first two are in play with respect to Detective Doyle's testimony.

B. Qualification

The specialized knowledge that qualifies a witness to offer an expert opinion may be derived from specialized education, practical experience, a study of technical works or a combination of these things. Wyatt v. State , 23...