United States v. Hearst

• Decision Date: 22 March 1976
• Docket Number: Cr. No. 74-364-OJC.
• Citation: 412 F. Supp. 893
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Patricia Campbell HEARST, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of California

412 F. Supp. 893

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Patricia Campbell HEARST, Defendant.

Cr. No. 74-364-OJC.

United States District Court, N. D. California.

March 22, 1976.

James L. Browning, Jr., U. S. Atty., F. Steele Langford, David P. Bancroft, Edward P. Davis, Jr., Asst. U. S. Attys., San Francisco, Cal., for the United States.

F. Lee Bailey, J. Albert Johnson, Boston, Mass., Thomas J. May, Brookline, Mass., for the defense.

ON MOTION TO ADMIT MEMORANDUM RE INADMISSIBILITY OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC TESTIMONY

OLIVER J. CARTER, Chief Judge.

Counsel for the defense urged this Court on at least three occasions to admit the testimony of Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer in the field of psycholinguistics. As reflected in the offer of proof, Dr. Singer, if called as an expert witness, would have testified that her expertise in this area enables her to conclude from a stylistic comparison of known writings and utterances of the defendant with certain writings and tape-recordings of the defendant's voice offered into evidence by the Government that these latter writings or utterances could not have been authored by the defendant.

Despite this offer of proof and counsel's persistent efforts to impress the Court with both the scientific reliability of the proposed testimony and its materiality in the instant case, the Court ruled against its admissibility. The purpose of this memorandum is to explain more fully the reasons for this ruling.

As the Court has emphasized on a number of occasions, there is no question that Dr. Singer is an eminently qualified clinical psychologist. It would be fair to conclude also that in the field of psycholinguistics Dr. Singer has become a recognized expert; she has been the recipient of much praise and admiration for her pioneering work in this developing art. It is the state of the art itself, however, and not the qualifications of Dr. Singer that dictated the ruling with respect to this testimony.

In considering whether to admit or exclude expert testimony, the trial court is vested with broad discretion. Hamling v. United States, 418 U.S. 87, 94 S.Ct. 2887, 41 L.Ed.2d 590 (1974); Salem v. United States Lines Co., 370 U.S. 31, 35, 82 S.Ct. 1119, 1122, 8 L.Ed.2d 313, 317 (1962); Mull v. United States, 402 F.2d 571, 575 (9th Cir. 1969); Lelles v. United States, 241 F.2d 21, 26 (9th Cir. 1957). In the same vein, the trial Court must exercise its discretion in evaluating an expert's qualifications and the relevance and materiality of his or her testimony. E. g., United States v. Dellinger, 472 F.2d 340, 382 (7th Cir. 1972). With respect to the exercise of this discretion the Court of Appeals for this Circuit has said:

The countervailing considerations most often noted to exclude what is relevant and material evidence are the risk that admission will 1) require undue consumption of time, 2) create a substantial danger of undue prejudice or of confusing the issues or of misleading the jury, 3) or unfairly and harmfully surprise a party who has not had a reasonable opportunity to anticipate the evidence submitted. Scientific or expert testimony particularly courts the second danger because of its aura of special reliability and trustworthiness.

United States v. Amaral, 488 F.2d 1148, 1152 (9th Cir. 1973).

The Court finds the language in this passage most applicable here, particularly in view of the paucity of authority cited by defense counsel for the admissibility of psycholinguistic testimony. In their rather lengthy brief filed in this matter, counsel cited only two cases in which the admissibility of such evidence has ever been discussed. The first case relied upon is a New York State decision in which an expert in the field of psycholinguistics was allowed to testify on behalf of the defense as to...