40 Ala. App. 67 - Frazier v. State’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

13 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Some criticism has been voiced as to the liberality which the courts, both trial and appellate, have accorded the reception of ■ opinion evidence given by the State Toxicologist and his assistants. Yet, essentially, in virtually every case, the step by step research and testing procedure used by these witnesses has been related to the jury along with the assumed data, corollaries, and other matters asserted to be scientifically axiomatic. “[2] Thus, while perhaps a toxicologist, for example, may not have had the extensive study or intensive training scholastically or experientially in the field of pathology which we might encounter in a specializing pathologist or a doctor of medicine, nevertheless, where the opinion called for is not of the curbstone variety but rather is predicated upon observation or laboratory demonstrations (under proper scientific controls such as those required by Tesney v. State, 77 Ala. 33 ), necroptic dissection, or upon reading and research, we cannot say the testimony should not go before the jury merely because the witness had not had this or that course in school. Criminal investigation can probably be called a science — and certainly it is at least a parascience — partaking as it does of the employment of scientific methods and knowledge in many fields to show by deduction or empiricism matters of cause and effect which are not within the scope of everyday observation. “[3] An expert witness is, by definition, any person whose opportunity or m”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 48 Ala. App. 549 - Wilbanks v. State