State v. Adams

• Decision Date: 20 January 1988
• Docket Number: No. 15676,15676
• Citation: 418 N.W.2d 618
• Parties: STATE of South Dakota, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Howard Joseph ADAMS, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: South Dakota Supreme Court

Page 618

418 N.W.2d 618

STATE of South Dakota, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Howard Joseph ADAMS, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 15676.

Supreme Court of South Dakota.

Argued Nov. 18, 1987.

Decided Jan. 20, 1988.

Robert E. Mayer, Asst. Atty. Gen., Roger A. Tellinghuisen, Atty. Gen., on brief, Pierre, for plaintiff and appellee.

Steve Miller, Jana M. Miner, on brief, Sioux Falls, for defendant and appellant.

SABERS, Justice.

Howard Joseph Adams (Adams) appeals from murder, robbery, and aggravated kidnapping convictions. We affirm.

Facts

At approximately noon on June 18th, 1986, Adams and Jimmy Lee Boykin (Boykin) visited Marlene Anawski (Anawski) whom they recently met. Adams and Boykin planned to go swimming on the afternoon of the 18th, but problems with the fuel pump on their car left them stranded in Sioux Falls. Contradictory testimony places the abandoned two-tone, early seventies Plymouth in either an alley near McKennan Hospital or the Prairie Market parking lot. Because they were without transportation, Anawski offered Adams and Boykin a place to stay for the evening. Sleeping quarters were set up for Adams and Boykin in a see-through mesh tent in the backyard. A party began at the Anawski residence in the early evening and broke up at approximately 12:45 a.m. Adams took a shower, and exchanged the cut-off jeans he had been wearing for a pair of jeans and a light nylon lavender and white shirt which he borrowed. Adams and Boykin attempted to hitch a ride to the nearby Stockmen's Bar but had to walk. They arrived at the Stockmen's Bar soon after leaving the Anawski residence. Adams left the bar a little before 2:00 a.m. but remained outside the building. At approximately 3:00 to 3:05 a.m., Adams and Boykin left the area of Stockmen's Bar and proceeded toward the Prairie Market parking lot.

In the early morning hours of June 19th, DuWayne Jensen (Jensen) picked up newspapers at the Argus Leader dock for delivery along his scheduled route. He departed from the pickup point at approximately 3:00 a.m. He made his first newspaper drop at Don's Diner and continued to his next scheduled drop at the Prairie Market. Later that morning, the Argus Leader began receiving complaints that newspapers had not been received on the east route. Jensen's route was retraced. At the newspaper rack at Prairie Market, papers from the previous day were lying on top of the rack, and current papers were inside the rack but scattered all over. Jensen did not make a delivery to his next stop at the Morrell plant.

Jensen's body was found around noon on June 19th in a field not far from Morrell's. His jaw and windpipe had been fractured and he had two black eyes. The cause of death was multiple stab wounds. Jensen's small white pickup was not at the scene, but had been seen at Morrell's earlier. Morrell worker Joe Kussela testified that as he came to work at approximately 3:30 in the morning, he pulled into the parking lot east of the plant and his headlights picked out a small white pickup parked near a truck owned by a friend. He noticed a man with dark brown hair, a beer belly, cut-off shorts, and no shoes. This man was dropping something into the bed of a pickup owned by a friend of Kussela. The man returned to the white truck and drove away. Kussela saw that there was a passenger in the truck. When Kussela's friend looked into the back of his truck later he discovered a bundle of newspapers. The papers were returned to the Argus and then given to another delivery man to finish Jensen's route. One paper was brought back when the second delivery driver noticed a dark stain on it. This stain was later identified as blood.

Testimony at trial showed that Adams returned to the Anawski residence sometime during the middle of the night and redressed in his cut-off shorts. The jeans and lavender shirt he was wearing that evening disappeared. Testimony also showed that by 5:00 a.m. on June 19th, Adams was asleep in the mesh tent in the Anawski backyard. He was wearing cut-off shorts.

Adams was arrested on June 20th, 1986 in Mitchell, South Dakota on unrelated charges. It was discovered that Adams had recent deep cuts on his left ring finger and left index finger. He and Boykin were indicted on charges of first-degree murder, felony murder, first-degree robbery, and aggravated kidnapping on July 21, 1986. As part of his defense, Adams claimed that it was Boykin, not Adams, who killed Jensen. Adams was tried before a jury on November 4th through December 17th, 1986. He was convicted of first-degree murder, first-degree robbery, and aggravated kidnapping.

1. BLOODSTAIN TESTING TESTIMONY BY STATE WITNESS REX RIIS

Adams contends that the trial court erred in allowing Rex Riis of the Division of Criminal Investigation (D.C.I.) crime laboratory to testify about the results of tests Riis ran on bloodstains found on newspapers and the victim's handkerchief and pickup. Riis' conclusions were that certain bloodstains on Jensen's handkerchief could have come from Adams, but not from Jensen or Boykin. As he did at the motion hearing, Adams argues that the scientific testing methodology and the specific techniques employed by Riis were not sufficiently reliable to warrant admission of the test results.

A. Standards for Admission

Initially, we clarify the standards for determining whether scientific testimony will be admitted. For many years, this court and the courts of many other jurisdictions have been guided by the test enunciated in Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C.Cir.1923). ¹ Under this test, before testimony related to a scientific principle or discovery is admissible, the principle "must be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs." Id. at 1014. The necessity for such a determination is obvious. It would be impractical to place upon the trial court the sole responsibility for determining whether a scientific principle is valid. While experienced judges are perhaps better positioned than most laypersons to evaluate complex scientific data, they have not been trained to evaluate scientific principles.

The Frye test does not simply elevate the opinion of the scientist over the layperson in determining the validity of scientific principles. It requires a general acceptance of the principle by those who are best equipped to evaluate--the experts in the particular scientific field. Not every scientist in a given field need embrace the principle, but a significant percentage must do so. Dismissed by some as a rather repugnant form of majoritarian head-counting, Harper v. State, 249 Ga. 519, 292 S.E.2d 389 (1982), we perceive the Frye test as requiring reasonable and necessary verification. ² Therefore, we continue to adhere to the Frye test as controlling the issue of admissibility of evidence involving scientific principles.

B. Electrophoretic Testing

Electrophoretic blood testing is utilized in several scientific fields, but has been employed most extensively in the area of criminal forensics. The identification of specific blood characteristics in bloodstains which are part of a criminal investigation is commonly the key to the prosecution's attempt to tie a particular defendant to a particular crime.

Electrophoresis is the movement of charged particles through a buffered conducting medium by application of a direct current. The term isozyme is used to describe enzymically active blood proteins which can be identified by their relative mobilities in an electric field. After separation of the proteins into marker bands by application of a current, specific chemicals are applied to make the proteins visible. [Citations omitted] The relative distance of the bands from a common origin is compared with known standards, and evaluated by established guidelines.

The results are then compared to population studies which show the known frequency of each factor in a given population. This produces a statistic which is representative of the percentage of the population that has that group and those factors in common. [Footnote omitted] The more genetic markers identified, the smaller the population of persons who might possess a particular combination of factors.

People v. Young, ( Young III ), 425 Mich. 470, 515-16, 391 N.W.2d 270, 290-91 (1986) (Boyle, J. dissenting).

In State v. Dirk, 364 N.W.2d 117 (S.D.1985), we found electrophoretic testing to be sufficiently reliable to pass the Frye test. Although the Dirk decision appears to control, the question of the reliability of electrophoretic blood testing continues to be challenged. ³ The 1986 Young decision demonstrates several difficulties in applying the Frye test to electrophoretic testing.

As noted above, electrophoresis is most commonly used in criminal forensics. As the Young court noted: "The number of scientists not working for a police agency who are familiar with electrophoresis of evidentiary bloodstains is small." Young, supra, 391 N.W.2d at 271. However, where the Young court was not convinced that sufficient significant testing had been undertaken to insure reliability of electrophoresis, we find sufficient documentation of this procedure's reliability for admissibility. ⁴ We do not interpret Frye to require that the scientific community be restricted to a narrowly defined class of "disinterested" experts. To do so would question the integrity and commitment of hundreds of criminal forensic experts who have the most practical experience in the area of electrophoresis. We do not question the importance of independent scientific documentation. Instead, we simply refuse to read this requirement into Frye.

C. Multi-System Method

The multi-system technique is one method of applying the principle of electrophoresis. It is clearly the method which has generated confrontations as to the reliability of electrophoresis in other cases. The issue of the reliability of the multi-system method appears to result from a...