Vela v. State
| Decision Date | 13 December 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. PD-1388-04.,PD-1388-04. |
| Citation | 209 S.W.3d 128 |
| Parties | Richard VELA, Jr., Appellant v. The STATE of Texas. |
| Court | Texas Court of Criminal Appeals |
Joseph V. Collina, Corpus Christi, for Appellant.
James D. Rosenkild, Asst. District Atty., Corpus Christi, Matthew Paul, State's Atty., Austin, for State.
The trial judge excluded the testimony of Richard Vela, Jr.'s witness, Cheryl Hartzendorf, who would have testified that if there is no physical evidence, then no rape occurred. The court of appeals ruled that Hartzendorf should have been allowed to testify because her experience qualified her as an expert.1 Because we hold that the court of appeals failed to conduct a proper analysis, we remand this case to the court of appeals.
At Richard Vela's trial for three counts of sexual assault and one count of aggravated assault, the State called Sonia Eddleman, the sexual assault nurse examiner who examined the victim after the rape. Eddleman stated that the examination revealed no injuries to the victim's mouth or genitals but that there was an "oozing tear" in the victim's anus and bruising on her body. Based on her examination, Eddleman claimed the victim had been sexually assaulted.
Vela later called Cheryl Hartzendorf, a certified legal nurse consultant, and the State requested a hearing outside the jury's presence. Before trial, Hartzendorf had reviewed the victim's hospital records and the Department of Public Safety lab report containing the results of Eddleman's examination. Hartzendorf intended to testify that, in her opinion, because there was no DNA or physical evidence linking Vela to the alleged rape, no sexual assault occurred. She further stated that her opinion was based on her general nursing experience and that she had not written, nor was aware of, any published articles supporting that theory. The trial judge allowed the State to recall Eddleman to rebut Hartzendorf's testimony. The State then challenged Hartzendorf's credentials and methodology, and the trial judge sustained the State's objection. The jury later acquitted Vela on two of the sexual-assault counts but convicted him of the sexual assault alleged in count three and the aggravated assault charge.
The Thirteenth Court of Appeals determined that Hartzendorf was a qualified expert witness,2 and after performing a harm analysis, the court found that her testimony could have had a significant effect on the outcome of the sexual-assault conviction.3 Asserting that "the trial judge, in excluding Hartzendorf's testimony, acted without reference to any guiding rules and principles," the court of appeals held that the trial judge abused his discretion in excluding Hartzendorf's testimony.4 As a result, the court of appeals reversed Vela's sexual-assault conviction but affirmed the aggravated assault conviction because Hartzendorf did not intend to testify about the alleged choking of the victim.5
We granted review to determine whether the Thirteenth Court of Appeals erred in holding that the trial judge abused his discretion in not permitting an expert witness's testimony to the effect that where there is no physical evidence, there is no rape.
The Texas Rules of Evidence set out three separate conditions regarding admissibility of expert testimony. First, Rule 104(a) requires that "[p]reliminary questions concerning the qualification of a person to be a witness ... be determined by the court...."6 Second, Rule 702 states: "If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise."7 And third, Rules 401 and 402 render testimony admissible only if it "tend[s] to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence."8
These rules require a trial judge to make three separate inquiries, which must all be met before admitting expert testimony: "(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."9 These conditions are commonly referred to as (1) qualification, (2) reliability, and (3) relevance. Only the first two conditions are at issue in this case, and we consider each in turn.
In Rodgers v. State, we noted that an appellate court should consider three criteria when determining whether a trial court abused its discretion in evaluating a witness's qualifications as an expert: (1) "is the field of expertise complex?"10; (2) "how conclusive is the expert's opinion?"11; and (3) "how central is the area of expertise to the resolution of the lawsuit?"12
Qualification is distinct from reliability and relevance and, therefore, should be evaluated independently. Although this Court has touched on the qualification analysis in prior cases, we have never discussed it in depth. We therefore look to Texas Supreme Court opinions for additional guidance. As that Court recognized in Broders v. Heise, the mere fact that a witness "`possesse[s] knowledge and skill not possessed by people generally ...' does not in and of itself mean that such expertise will assist the trier of fact regarding the issue before the court."13 And because a witness will not always qualify as an expert merely by virtue of a general background,14 qualification is a two-step inquiry. A witness must first have a sufficient background in a particular field, but a trial judge must then determine whether that background "goes to the very matter on which [the witness] is to give an opinion."15
The Texas Supreme Court examined the second step of the qualification inquiry in Broders. The Court considered "whether the trial court abused its discretion in excluding the testimony of an emergency physician that the conduct of the three defendant emergency physicians and the defendant hospital was a cause in fact of a patient's death."16 The proponents argued that "merely because [the witness was] a medical doctor," the witness was qualified to testify about "all medical matters."17 Rejecting that argument, the Court explained that "there is no validity ... to the notion that every licensed medical doctor should be automatically qualified to testify as an expert on every medical question."18 If a medical degree carried automatic expert qualification in all medical matters, a trial judge could no longer fulfill his gatekeeping duty and "ensur[e] that those who purport to be experts truly have expertise concerning the actual subject about which they are offering an opinion."19
The Court explained that the proponent must "establish that the expert has `knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education' regarding the specific issue before the court which would qualify the expert to give an opinion on that particular subject."20 Given the facts in Broders, the Court determined that the proponents "simply did not establish that [the witness's] opinions on cause in fact would have risen above mere speculation to offer genuine assistance to the jury."21
In Christophersen v. Allied-Signal Corporation, the Fifth Circuit acknowledged the same problem with medical experts:
[A]lthough credentials can be significant, they alone are not necessarily determinative. The questions, for example, do not stop if the expert has an M.D. degree. That alone is not enough to qualify him to give an opinion on every conceivable medical question. This is because the inquiry must be into actual qualification....22
Similarly, in Gammill v. Jack Williams Chevrolet, Inc., the Texas Supreme Court again addressed the second part of the qualification inquiry and examined the qualifications of witnesses to testify as experts in an automobile-related products-liability suit.23 Examining the background of one witness, the Court concluded that the witness "was shown to be experienced in designing and testing fighter planes and missiles, but he was not shown to have any training or experience in the design or manufacture of automobiles or their relevant components."24 Because "his only experience with automobiles at all was while working part-time as a mechanic doing general repairs," the witness did not "have any expertise that would qualify him to testify about design defects in a vehicle's accelerator or restraint system ... [or] as to the cause of [the victim's] injuries or death."25 Notwithstanding his extensive background, the Court held that the witness was not qualified to render an opinion on the specific questions regarding automobiles that were at issue in that case.26
"The focus, then, is on the `fit' between the subject matter at issue and the expert's familiarity therewith, and not on a comparison of the expert's title or specialty with that of the defendant or a competing expert."27 We discussed the "fit" requirement in Jordan v. State and explained that the issue under the reliability and relevance conditions "is whether the expert's testimony took into account enough of the pertinent facts to be of assistance to the trier of fact on a fact in issue."28 But "fit" is not just a component of reliability and relevance—it is also a component of the qualification inquiry. Just as the subject matter of an expert's testimony should be tailored to the facts of a case, the expert's background must be tailored to the specific area of expertise in which the expert desires to testify.
The court of appeals failed to do an adequate inquiry into Hartzendorf's qualifications to testify about physical...
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