A dangerous precedent?

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Voice analysis expert testimony will not assist the trier of fact, says Puerto Rico District Court

• Nov
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• 
  
• 14

• Posted by Shweta Nawani
 
• Posted in Forensic Expert Witness, Voice Analysis Expert Witness

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Pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 702, a witness may testify to scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge if it helps the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue. However, following an unusual line of reasoning in the case of U.S. v. Arce-Lopez, the Puerto Rico district Court has held that a voice analysis expert testimony shall not assist the trier of fact and has denied the same to be introduced at trial.

Background of the case

After Defendants Carlos Arce–Lopez and Annete Cancel–Lorenzana were charged with conspiracy to possess cocaine with the intent of distribution, their defense attorney Anita Hill received a series of phone calls and voicemails from an individual identifying himself as Javier Olmo–Rivera. He attempted to speak about Arce–Lopez’s case as a Government witness, detained at the time in the Metropolitan Detention Center. After a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) investigation concluded that Olmo–Rivera did not make and could not have made any calls from MDC to Ms. Hill, Defendant contracted a voice identification expert to compare a voice exemplar of Olmo–Rivera with the audio recordings on Ms. Hill’s phone.

The expert, using biometric analysis, concluded that the exemplar voice matched the voice in the phone recordings. The government subsequently identified another federal inmate, Jesus Maldonado–Calderon as the caller, and moved to bar Defendant’s voice analysis expert testimony connecting Olmo–Rivera to the phone calls.

Decision of the Court

The Court found the jury to be “perfectly well-equipped” to listen to the witnesses testify in court, compare their voices to the voice in the audio recordings, and draw conclusions about whose voice is in the audio recordings. Taking note of the Daubert judgment at 591 that expert testimony must assist the jury in resolving a relevant factual dispute, the Court said this was “not an area in which expert testimony would be helpful to the jury.” Reliance was also placed on U.S. v. Salimonu, 182 F.3d 63, 74 (1st Cir.1999) which affirmed the district court’s exclusion of expert linguist testimony on the ground that it would not assist the trier of fact.

The parties’ pleadings citing a plethora of cases involving audio recordings and voice analysis implicating criminal defendants went unheard, and as to Arce–Lopez’s argument that excluding this expert testimony would violate his Sixth Amendment right to confrontation, the Court held

This case involves a voice recording of a witness, not a defendant. Because the audio recordings do not implicate the defendant’s guilt, and because the Court is not preventing the defendant from cross-examining the government’s witnesses, excluding expert testimony on this issue does not implicate his Sixth Amendment right to confront the witnesses against him.

Having found that the voice analysis expert testimony would not “help the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue” as per Fed.R.Evid.702(a), the Court then held that it need not decide whether the expert’s analysis was scientifically valid and reliable in satisfaction of the remaining elements of Rule 702.

Final ruling

The Government’s motion to bar the voice analysis expert testimony was granted.

**Written for the web by the EWG Editorial Team