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FRYE HEARING PROPERLY ORDERED, CRITERIA EXPLAINED, DOUBLE HEARSAY ABOUT PRIOR THREAT TO KILL SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ADMITTED, ERROR HARMLESS (CT APP).

The Court of Appeals determined the trial court properly ordered a Frye hearing in this strangulation/drowning murder case. The court further found that testimony about an argument between defendant and the victim a month before the murder, in which the defendant threatened to kill the victim, was double hearsay and was not admissible under any hearsay exception. The error was deemed harmless. The Court explained the criteria for ordering a Frye hearing:

Under the Frye standard, expert testimony is admissible only if a scientific “principle or procedure has gained general acceptance’ in its specified field” … . The process is meant to assess “whether the accepted techniques, when properly performed, generate results accepted as reliable within the scientific community generally” … . Absent a novel or experimental scientific theory, a Frye hearing is generally unwarranted.

“The Frye inquiry is separate and distinct from the admissibility question applied to all evidence — whether there is a proper foundation — to determine whether the accepted methods were appropriately employed in a particular case” … . The proper procedure for addressing concerns about foundation can include an in limine hearing where the trial court determines whether ” there is simply too great an analytical gap between the data and the opinion proffered'” … . The question is whether the expert’s opinion sufficiently relates to existing data or “is connected to existing data only by the ipse dixit of the expert” … .

To the extent that the trial court improperly employed the Frye procedure to rule on the foundation of the defense expert’s testimony, any such error was harmless. People v Brooks, 2018 NY Slip Op 01956, CtApp 3-22-18

CRIMINAL LAW (EVIDENCE, FRYE HEARING PROPERLY ORDERED, CRITERIA EXPLAINED, DOUBLE HEARSAY ABOUT PRIOR THREAT TO KILL SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ADMITTED, ERROR HARMLESS (CT APP))/EVIDENCE (CRIMINAL LAW,  FRYE HEARING PROPERLY ORDERED, CRITERIA EXPLAINED, DOUBLE HEARSAY ABOUT PRIOR THREAT TO KILL SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ADMITTED, ERROR HARMLESS (CT APP))/FRYE HEARING (CRIMINAL LAW,  FRYE HEARING PROPERLY ORDERED, CRITERIA EXPLAINED, DOUBLE HEARSAY ABOUT PRIOR THREAT TO KILL SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ADMITTED, ERROR HARMLESS (CT APP))/HEARSAY (CRIMINAL LAW, DOUBLE HEARSAY ABOUT PRIOR THREAT TO KILL SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ADMITTED, ERROR HARMLESS (CT APP))

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